This is my piece of the puzzle. This information was received by me in an intuitive, co-creative process with the Universe because I really wanted to know the truth of who built the megaliths, and it led to all the information I shared in my video and much more. It is clear to me that this information was given to me to bring it to light. Please watch the foundational video on this blog of “Physical Evidence for the Layout of a Planetary Grid System…and a Suppressed Global Civilization.
There is no place on the planet that this civilization is not. Like I said in the video, the evidence is all around us, and below us, and hidden in plain sight. Literally just outside our front doors, in our back yards, in our neighborhoods, in our parks, and road system.
The purpose of this blog is to show you exactly why I believe this, and provide much, much more evidence to support my belief, and information on other related topics. Not knowing this information allows all the many crimes against Humanity, the Planet, and the Creator/Creation to continue unabated because no one knows about it. It has been well-hidden for a reason by those who wish to harm us all for power, control, and energy. Everything is changing, and this information needs to come back out into collective awareness as soon as possible.
I also believe, that up until 500 or so years ago, Humanity was on a positive evolutionary path and in Unity Consciousness, and that around 1492 was the beginning of the hijack of this timeline by dark forces, and the replacement of it with one called Rome. Can’t tell you how this was done, just that it looks like that is what happened because the Ancient Global Civilization built everything on the planet. The same styles/designs cross oceans and continents, from ancient to modern!!!
I am going to start at the beginning of my life, because this is a lifelong pathway that ultimately connected me to the Truth. I wasn’t consciously aware of my spiritual path, and its direct connections to this information, for most of my life. But I was connected to it from the very beginning of my life. I am almost 55-years-old. It has taken me most of that time to put all these puzzle pieces together. Starting this process by telling you about specific moments of awareness in my life journey is ultimately the best way to organize an overwhelming amount of information.
I am from a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (AKA WASP), solidly middle-class family, primarily with roots in the Deep South.
All my known ancestry goes back to the very beginning of what has come to be known as the United States, starting with the Mayflower’s arrival to the so-called Plymouth Bay Colony (I am a direct descendant of William Brewster, a moving force behind the Pilgrims, and the lay religious leader of the Plymouth Colony until the arrival of its ordained minister several years later) to the 1750’s with the influx of the Scots-Irish, my lineage through my maternal grandmother. This is in accordance with the history we have been taught.
It is important to note, that on my Dad’s side of the family, the family history was repeated to my generation as that of the Huguenots. That was all they knew. No elaboration. Just that they were French Huguenots.
Up until recently, the Huguenots were recorded in available historical references as Reformed Calvinists. So the available information not long ago was that for some reason a Protestant Christian sect in France, the Huguenots, were persecuted, and even massacred, for almost 100 years. Come to find out in the Internet Age, the Huguenots were Cathars and Moors.
I grew up in Montgomery County Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C. My first home as a small child was in Rockville. When I was two, my parents moved to Gaithersburg, which is where my earliest conscious memories are. Not any big hits there until much, much later.
The family church I grew up in was Twinbrook Baptist in Rockville. When I started researching a couple of years ago, I found out that the Twinbrook area is adjacent to Rock Creek.
The softball team, of which my dad, an elementary school teacher and administrator, was a member, practiced at the Meadow Hall Elementary School field, which was right beside the church, just slightly downhill, and was the next street address over on Twinbrook Parkway.
When dad was practicing, and I was young, I, instead of watching the games, I was always down off into the woods, right off the ball field, exploring. It was a really cool place, in more ways than one. What I remember is going down, down into the woods, and eventually finding really big stones to play in. They were really fun for a 6-, 7-, 8-, or whatever-year-old, to play in and around.
This location was close to Lake Needwood and Lake Frank, and both are man-made lakes. I will dedicate a future blog exclusively on the role man-made lakes play related to this subject and the cover-up of it.
In 1974, right after the birth of my youngest brother, we moved to a larger home in Rockville. I always tell people we moved as close to Potomac, Maryland, as my parents could afford. I lived here until 1982, when, after 1 year of junior college, I joined the Army for the Veterans’ Educational Assistance Program. So this is where I grew up.
The house was brand new when we moved in – no trees, and the funny, almost comet-green color of sprayed grass seed.
The reason I bring this up is because the street we lived on – Lindley Terrace – on one end, some of the houses had a steep gradient on the backside – I mean really steep!!! However, the houses were built on a predominantly flat surface. The house my parents bought was on one of the flattest lots on the street. This relates to what I now believe was actually underneath us. Like, a flat-topped pyramid, perhaps? I mean, when I was a kid, for some reason, I really made a mental note of the unusual features of my neighborhood street.
We were literally right next to the boundary fence of the Lakewood Country Club, with a golf tee area right next to the fence. I will be dedicating a specific blog on how golf courses relate to the subject of the cover-up of mounds.
As a family we would go occasionally to Thurmont, Maryland, in Western Maryland, to Cunningham Falls State Park. There was a picnic/swimming area at a lake, and then there were the falls themselves. So I have memories of climbing up the big rocks of the falls. I, like everyone else, had no concept in my awareness, that waterfalls could be anything other than natural. But massive and block-shaped stonework is a recurring feature of waterfalls like what is pictured here. Take a close look at the shape of the rocks in this photo.
Before moving on from Cunningham Falls, it is important to note that Camp David is located in the vicinity. As I learned more about earth grids, I found out that Camp David is situated on a nodal point. It is the norm for centers of power to be on the earth’s power points. There is a reason for this.
My house was relatively close to Great Falls, Maryland. Access to the falls themselves, at least when I was young, was cut off after Hurricane Agnes went through in 1972. There was access to an area with big stones that was fun to hike and climb, as well as the C & O Canal. So, it was a place I went to many times with family or friends.
When I started to piece together that waterfalls, and canals as well, were part of the Ancient Civilization, I looked up Great Falls. This is an aerial image of Mather Gorge there. Now, I think the spin is how this could be natural, but look at how straight it is.
And here is how it looks closer to earth….
And then when you realize that part of the ancient civilization involved canal-building (another blog unto itself), then it becomes logical to see this as a canal rather than natural.
This is a picture of the C & O Canal at Harper’s Ferry. They want us to believe that this was built in the early 1800’s. So, what is wrong with that date of construction? This is a sophisticated engineering project.
As a matter of fact, the C & O Canal parallels the Potomac River through this area for a long distance. What technology existed in America in the late 1700s/early 1800s could have built a sophisticated project like this? I am not aware of any technology that existed at that time that could have built something like this. According to our history books, the second Industrial Revolution didn’t begin in the U.S. until the mid-1800s.
My conclusion is that the C & O Canal, as well as the Erie Canal, and the St. Lawrence Seaway, and a canal system that covered the continent, was built by the advanced ancient civilization that was long-established here when the Europeans first arrived. Again, when I say ancient, I mean a very old civilization that was living and flourishing in North America (and South America) when the Europeans first arrived. And I have much more to say about the use of the word European to describe white people in a later blog based on my findings. This ancient civilization was global!
I would like to bring your attention to the subject of Incline Railways known as funiculars in this video.
This type of incline railway works like an obliquely-angled elevator, in which cables attached to a pulley-system raise- and-lower the cars along the grade.
Two cars are paired at opposite-ends and act as each other’s counterweight. As such, there is not a need for traction between the wheels and rails, and thereby allowing them to scale steep slopes, unlike traditional rail-cars.
Thing is, there used to be a lot more of them than there are now, and incline-railways were a worldwide thing.
We are told that the first railway in America was an incline-railway built in Lewiston, New York between 1762 and 1764.
It was called Montresor’s Tramway, and said to have been designed and built by British engineers at the close of the French and Indian War (1756 – 1763) to haul goods up the steep slope at the Niagara River near the Niagara Falls escarpment at Lewiston, New York.
No longer in existence, we are told it was located where the Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park, otherwise known as the “Artpark,” is today.
Lewiston is described as the first European settlement in western New York, established in 1720.
Lewiston lies half-way between Fort Niagara in Youngstown, New York, and Fort George in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario, and Niagara Falls, a group of three falls that straddle the international border between the United States and Canada.
Further south, Fort Erie in Ontario is located across the Niagara River from Buffalo, New York, where the river meets Lake Erie.
It is interesting to note that there is an incline railway that is still operational today at Niagara Falls in Ontario, approximately 5-miles, or 8-kilometers, south of Lewiston on the Niagara River.
The Falls Incline Railway is located next to Horseshoe Falls and links “Table Rock Center” and “Journey Behind the Falls” on the Niagara Parkway with the “Fallsview Tourist Area.”
We are told it was built for the Niagara Parks Commission by the Swiss Company Von Roll, and began operating in October of 1966.
The other historic Incline Railways of the Niagara Falls region between the United States and Canada included:
The Prospect Park Incline Railway at Prospect Park in New York, said to have been built in 1845, and completely removed in 1908 after an accident killed someone.
It was then replaced by an elevator that operated between 1910 and 1960 until it closed, and replaced by the current Prospect Point Observation Tower in 1961.
Then in 1869, the Leander Colt Incline Railway was said to have been built on the Canadian-side of the Falls, near the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, but damaged and abandoned 20-years later in 1889.
Another Whirlpool Rapids Incline was said to have been built in 1876 near the Leander Colt Incline, but damaged by fire in 1934 and replaced by the “Great Gorge Trip” of the Niagara Belt-Line, a train route around Niagara Falls…
…which later became the “White Water Walk” where you can take a leisurely stroll where the Niagara Belt-Line once was.
Lastly, we are told the Clifton Incline was built in 1894 to serve the Canadian-side of the “Maid of the Mist” boat.
It closed in 1976 and reopened in 1977 as the “Maid of the Mist” Incline, and closed again in 1990.
Almost 30-years-later, in 2019, it was re-opened as the Hornblower Niagara Funicular, and operates today for Hornblower Niagara Cruises.
There were two historic incline railways that operated on the Niagara Escarpment in Hamilton, Ontario.
One was the Mount Hamilton Railway, also known as the Wentworth Street Incline, which started operation in 1895 and ended in 1936.
The other historic incline railway in Hamilton was the Hamilton and Barton, also known as the James Street Incline, first opened in 1892 and operated until 1932, when it was shut down for the given reason of financial losses.
As an interesting aside, compare the Niagara Escarpment on the left in appearance with the Endless Wall at New River Gorge State Park in West Virginia on the right.
Another Incline Railway still in operation today in Canada is the Old Quebec Funicular, located next to the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City.
It first opened in 1879. In the well-over 100-years it has been operating it has been closed and renovated twice.
The first-time was when it was severely damaged by a fire in 1945, after which time it was rebuilt and reopened in 1946.
The second-time was when a cable snapped in 1996, killing a passenger, and the funicular wasn’t reopened until 1998 as an inclined elevator, since the cars are independent of each other.
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, there are two remaining incline railways, out of what was originally seventeen on Mount Washington, named the Monongahela and Duquesne Inclines.
The Monongahela Incline on Mount Washington was said to have been designed by Prussian-born engineer John Endres of Cincinnati, Ohio, and started operating in 1870.
It is the oldest continuously operating funicular in the United States.
Interesting to note that 1870, the same year the Monongahela Incline became operational in Pittsburgh, was also the same year John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler, founded the Standard Oil Company.
The Standard Oil Company was an American oil producing, transporting, refining, marketing company…and monopoly, which exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity.
Were they making existing rail transportation infrastructure operational until they had the modes of transportation invented to replace them – specifically the introduction of gasoline-powered road transportation?
Let’s see more of what the historical narrative has to say about these incline railways!
The Duquesne Incline was said to have been designed by Hungarian-American civil engineer Samuel Diescher.
Completed in 1877, the Duquesne Incline rises 800-feet, or 244-meters, at a 30-degree angle up Mt. Washington.
It was closed in need of repairs in 1962, but reopened the next year after local residents raised funds to restore it, and it has been completely refurbished since then and is one of Pittsburgh’s most popular tourist attractions.
Oh yeah, before we leave Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the Forks of the Ohio River for Cincinnati, Ohio, on the Ohio River, it is also interesting to note that the petroleum industry in the United States began in earnest in 1859 when Edwin Drake found oil on a piece of leased-land near Titusville, Pennsylvania, in what is now called Oil Creek State Park.
For this reason, Titusville is called the Birthplace of the Oil Industry, and for a number of years this part of Pennsylvania was the leading oil-producing region in the world.
Cincinnati had five historic incline railways.
Mount Auburn was Cincinnati’s first incline railway, which started operating in 1872.
In 1889, there was a terrible accident where a malfunction caused the car to careen down the track with 7 people in it, causing death and destruction along the way.
It was remodelled, opening again in 1890, and only operated for another 8-years. Control of it passed into the consolidated system, and it was demolished and abandoned.
Public stairs, known as the Main Street steps, replaced the Mount Auburn Incline.
In 1875, the Price Hill Incline was the next to open in Cincinnati.
It was the steepest, and shortest, of the five, and carried passengers and freight.
It was privately-owned by the Price family, and carried passengers to the Price Hill House at the top, a restaurant and entertainment venue.
The incline stopped operating in 1942.
This is where the Price Hill Incline was located.
Cincinnati’s third incline to open was the one on Mount Adams, the longest-running of the five, operating from 1876 until 1948.
The incline of 945-feet, or 288-meters, took 2 minutes and 20-seconds to go from the bottom to the top.
For almost twenty-years, from 1876 to 1895, the Highland House at the top of the incline was a destination for food and entertainment.
This was the former location of the Mount Adams Incline.
Opening the same year as the Mount Adams Incline, the Bellevue Incline, also known as the Elm Street Incline and the Clifton Inclined Plane, started operating in 1876.
It was 1,000-feet, or 305-meters ,- long and the highest in elevation of the five inclines.
The Bellevue Incline ran between the Jackson Brewery and McMicken Hall, the University of Cincinnati’s first college.
The Bellevue House opened the same year as the incline, and served Moerlein beer, and had entertainment like music and bowling.
Bellevue House unfortunately burned down in 1901 and the Incline closed 25-years later.
The fifth and last incline railway was said to have been constructed in Cincinnati in 1892.
It had no entertainment house at the top to draw passengers.
It closed in 1923, the second of the five to close-down.
Moving west across the country to look at some of the historic incline railways there, in Duluth, Minnesota, the Highland Park Tramway Line served Duluth Heights via an Incline-Railway from 1892 to 1939, which was the last piece of the electric streetcar system to be dismantled, as the rest started going away in the early 1930s.
In Iowa, the Fenelon Place Cable Car is found in Dubuque’s Cathedral Historic District, and is described as the world’s steepest, shortest scenic railway, said to have been built in 1882 for the private-use of J. K. Graves, a local banker and State Senator.
It is still in operation today.
There was an historic Incline Railway at the Royal Gorge in Canon City, Colorado.
George Cole of the Royal Gorge Bridge and Amusement Company was given credit for the design and supervision construction first of the Royal Gorge Bridge, at the time World’s Highest Suspension Bridge, composed of 2,100 strands of wire that are anchored in granite walls and suspended from four towers rising 75-feet, or 23-meters, above the roadway.
It was said to have been constructed between June and November of 1929 (which would have been the year the Great Depression began).
The bridge is contained within the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park, a theme park on the edge of the gorge around both ends of the bridge, which itself was said to have been built as a park attraction and not for actual use for road transportation.
George Cole was then credited with the construction of the world’s steepest incline railway in 1931 to transport passengers from the canyon rim to its floor and back.
A wildfire in 2013 damaged the Incline Railway as well as most of the park’s buildings and aerial tram.
The park was rebuilt and reopened in 2015, but the Incline Railway was among the attractions not restored as it was destroyed beyond repair.
Like the historic railroad that once-traversed the Niagara Gorge in New York and Ontario, there is a rail-line running through the Royal Gorge in Colorado, only this one is still in operation today, year-road, between Canon City and Parkdale, Colorado.
In California, I found several historic incline railways, one of which is still in operation and others are not.
Angels Flight on Bunker Hill in Los Angeles, which first operated from 1901 until 1969, is still in operation today.
We are told that it was moved a half-block south from its original location when it reopened as a tourist attraction in 1996, and has run almost continuously since then, with a few exceptions, like closing for nine-years following a fatal accident.
Angels Flight has a decidedly Moorish-looking appearance….
Court Flight also on Bunker Hill opened in 1905 and ascended 200-feet, or 61-meters, at a grade of 43-degrees. It functioned for only 39-years, closing in 1943 we are told because of low-profitability during World War II.
The Los Angeles and Mount Washington Incline Railway in Los Angeles opened in 1909.
Passengers could ride the incline railway to the top for 5-cents, and they could visit Mount Washington Hotel at the top, a grand hotel.
Alas, less than only 10-years after it opened, city inspectors determined that the railway was unsafe due to a worn cable and subsequently shut it down in 1918.
The Grand Hotel at the top of Mount Washington became the International Headquarters for Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship in 1920.
The Santa Catalina Incline Railway on the privately-owned by that time Santa Catalina Island climbed above the Avalon Amphitheater starting in 1905 as a tourist attraction, until its closure after a fire in that devastated Avalon in 1918.
Moving on to incline railways, AKA funiculars, around the world, here are more examples.
In the United Kingdom, there is history of at least 40 of them that I can find a reference to. Though quite a few of these funiculars are still in operation today, quite a few are not.
There is the water-powered Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway in North Devon, which is the highest and steepest water-powered funicular in the world, at 862-feet, or 263-meters, -long, said to have been built between 1887 and its opening in 1890.
The Clifton Rocks Railway in Bristol, England, was an underground funicular railway that first opened in March of 1893 and closed in October of 1934, and funded by George Newnes, a publisher and proprietor of the Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway.
Like what we saw in Niagara Falls region with the historic funiculars at the Niagara Gorge near the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge between New York and Ontario, and in Colorado with the Royal Gorge Bridge and Incline Railway, the Clifton Rocks Railway upper station was near the Clifton Suspension bridge, and it linked to Hotwells and Bristol Harbor at the bottom of another gorge, the Avon Gorge.
The existence of the Clifton Suspension Bridge was credited to the famous prolific British civil and mechanical engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, called “one of the 19th-century engineering giants.”
The Aberystwyth Cliff Railway in Aberystwyth, Wales, is the longest electric funicular in the British Isles, at 778-feet, or 237-meters-long, and the second-longest after the Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway.
It first opened in August of 1896, and is still in operation today.
Kings Hall was at the top of the Aberystwyth Cliff Funicular and was a favored entertainment venue there for concerts and dances.
It had a great dance floor, and said to have been built in the Art Deco Architecture style in 1934 (which would have been between World War I and World War II).
Major band concerts were also held there, like Led Zeppelin in January of 1973 during their Strange Affinity British Tour in 1972 and 1973.
The King’s Hall was demolished in 1989, for the given reason of apparent structural weaknesses and disrepair…
…and it was replaced where it stood on the corner of Marine Terrace and Terrace Road by the King’s Hall residential flats and commercial units.
In Australia, the Cloudland Funicular ran from the Main Road straight up to the Cloudland Dance Hall in the Bowen Hills suburb of Brisbane.
The funicular was demolished in 1967.
The Cloudland Dance Hall, also known as Luna Park, was a huge thing during the 40’s when the US troops were stationed there.
Like Kings Hall in Aberystwyth, Wales, the Cloudland had a great dance floor.
Also like Kings Hall in Wales, it was demolished in the 1980s, and the Cloudland Apartments occupy the former location of this iconic landmark.
In New Zealand, the Wellington Cable Car funicular is still operational today, and first started operating in 1902.
It connects the shopping district of Lambton Quay with the suburb of Kelburn.
The line consists of a single track with a passing loop in the middle for the two cars.
The Tunel Funicular in Istanbul, Turkey, first opened in 1875, and is the second-oldest fully-underground urban railway in the world after the London Underground, which opened in 1863.
The Tunel also has a single-track with a passing loop for the two cars.
It connects the quarters of Karakoy, the modern name for the old part of the city originally known as Galata and Beyoglu, originally known as Pera.
The Tunel’s existence was credited to French engineer Eugene-Henri Gavand, who in 1867 visited Istanbul, which was then Constantinople, as a tourist, and came up with the idea of designing a funicular to help all the people who were struggling to get up-and-down the steep Yuksek Kaldirim Avenue.
It was said to have been constructed between July of 1871 and December of 1874, and officially opened in January of 1875.
I can’t find anything about Eugene-Henri Gavand except for this book attributed to him about the Tunel.
The Buda Castle Hill Funicular in Budapest, Hungary, first opened in March of 1870, the same year as the Monogahela Incline in Pittsburgh and the founding of Standard Oil, and around the same time that the construction of the Tunel in Constantinople that we are told was starting in 1871.
Part of the destruction of the Buda Castle complex during World War II, it reopened in June of 1986.
The funicular links Adam Clark Square and the Szchenyi Chain Bridge at street-level to the Buda Castle above, the palace complex of the Hungarian Kings.
The Szchenyi Chain Bridge was said to have been designed by English engineer William Tierney Clark, and built by Scottish engineer Adam Clark starting in 1840 and opening in 1849, and that it was the first permanent bridge to cross the Danube River in Hungary.
At the time of its construction, it was considered one of the modern world’s engineering wonders.
As I mentioned previously, these incline railways known as funiculars were a worldwide thing.
Other historic and present-day locations include:
Jacob’s Ladder on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
A two-car inclined railway to carry cargo between Jamestown and the Fort was said to have been constructed in 1829 .
The power supply for the incline railway was a team of three-donkeys that rotated around a capstan connected to the cars by iron chain and pulleys.
Then in 1871, termite damage to the wooden ties of the railway led to the Royal Engineers to removing the cars, rails and associated machinery of the inclined railway.
Today, what became known as Jacob’s Ladder is a staircase leading from Jamestown, the capital city of St. Helena, up to Ladder Hill Fort and the suburb of Half Tree Hollow.
In Valparaiso, Chile, the oldest of the incline railways known as the Ascensor Concepcion, is still in operation today.
It first opened in 1883 to transport passengers from Elias Alley on the Plan de Concepcion, or the flat part of the city where public and commercial buildings are found, to the Gervasoni Promenade on Concepcion Hill.
The total railway length is 226-feet, or 60-meters, and it climbs 154-feet, or 47-meters, above sea-level at a 46-degree angle.
In Hong Kong, the Peak Tram started operating in May of 1888, and was said to be the first funicular in Asia.
Now owned and operated by Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels (HSH), it runs from Garden Road Admiralty to Victoria Peak, covering a distance of .87-miles, or 1.4-kilometers.
It is a single-track-line with a passing loop, and two curves, one at the bottom and one at the top.
There are many more examples to choose from, but here’s a couple more to leave you with before I end this post.
In India, there is an incline railway known as the “winch train” to get up to the Murugan Temple in Palani in southern India’s Tamil Nadu State.
It was said to have been first commissioned in 1966 originally to help get the elderly, sick and handicapped people to the temple at the top of the hill.
And lastly, the Penang Hill Railway that climbs Penang Hill outside of George Town in Malaysia’s Penang State.
It is a single-track railway with a passing loop that passes through a tunnel that is the steepest in the world.
The construction of the Penang Hill Railway was said to have started in 1909 and officially opened on January 1st of 1924.
The given reason for it having initially been constructed was for the British colonial community to enjoy the cooler air of Penang Hill.
As you can see from the examples provided in this video, there used to be a lot more of these inclined railways than there are now, and they were all over the world, including one on Saint Helena, a small island in the South Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa.
Of the Incline Railways no longer in existence, they were typically either deemed no longer profitable, unsafe, or destroyed by fire.
The same is true for historic trolley parks, most of which are long gone due primarily to fire, though a few amusement parks remain in their original locations, but without the trolley, like Camden Park in Huntingdon, West Virginia.
Of this type of incline railway still in operation today, they either operate as part of the tourist industry, or are still operating as part of the public transportation system.
It certainly appears as if those behind the reset of history didn’t want to keep any of the highly-advanced rail infrastructure found around the world that was problematic in our historical narrative unless they could profit from it or it made practical sense from a public transport sense to keep it in place.
Something to think about when trying to piece together what has taken place here without our knowledge or consent.
I am bringing forward unlikely pairs of historical figures represented in the National Statuary Hall at the U. S. Capitol who have things in common with each other in this series called “Snapshots from the National Statuary Hall.”
I am pairing Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II and former President representing the State of Kansas, and Lew Wallace, Union General and former Governor of New Mexico Territory, representing the State of Indiana
So far in this series, I have paired Michigan’s Gerald Ford, a former President of the United States, and Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, the former President of the Confederate States of America; Dr. Norman Borlaug, Ph.D, often called the “Father of the Green Revolution; and Colorado’s Dr. Florence R. Sabin, M.D, a pioneer for women in science; Louisiana’s controversial Governor, Huey P. Long, and Alabama’s Helen Keller, a deaf-blind woman who gained prominence as an author, lecturer, activist; Henry Clay, attorney and statesman from Kentucky, and Lewis Cass, military officer, politician and statesman from Michigan; and John Gorrie for Florida, a physician and inventor of mechanical refrigeration and William King for Maine, a merchant and Maine’s first governor.
Representing the State of Kansas in the National Statuary Hall, Dwight D. Eisenhower achieved the rank of 5-star general in 1944 during World War II; was the first Supreme Commander of NATO from 1951 to 1952; and the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, in October of 1890.
His Eisenhauer ancestors immigrated to America from Karlsbrunn, Germany, and settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1741, considered part of the what are called the Pennsylvania Dutch.
The Eisenhower family moved to Abilene, Kansas, in 1892, and Dwight graduated from high school there in 1909.
In 1911, Eisenhower accepted an appointment to the U. S. Army military academy at West Point in New York, and graduated in the middle of the class of 1915.
His 1915 class at West Point became known as the “Class the Stars Fell on” because 59 out of 164 graduates that year became general officers, besides Eisenhower, including the 5-Star World War II General Omar Bradley.
During the years of World War I, between 1914 and 1918, Eisenhower served in infantry and logistics at bases in Texas, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, like Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio…
…Fort Oglethorpe in northern Georgia…
…Fort Leavenworth in Kansas…
…Camp Meade in Maryland…
…and Camp Colt in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
By the time he received orders to go to France, the war was over.
After the war, Eisenhower was promoted to Major, a rank he held for 16-years.
His assignments included being assigned to a convoy that drove the 3,000-mile, or 4,800-kilometer, length of the Lincoln Highway, from Washington, DC to California, to test vehicles and show the need for improved roads to the nation, and said to have inspired the National Highway System…
…and commanding a battalion of tanks at Camp Meade.
He was the Executive Officer under Major General Fox Conner in the Panama Canal Zone from about 1922 to 1924, under whom he studied military history and theory…
…and on General Conner’s recommendation, he attended the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, between 1925 and 1926.
From there, he was a Battalion Commander at Fort Benning in Georgia until 1927.
Then he was assigned to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and graduated from there in 1928.
While Eisenhower was the Executive Officer to the Assistant Secretary of War George Mosely from 1929 to 1933, he attended the Army Industrial College at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, where he graduated from in 1933.
The Army Industrial College today is known as the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy.
Eisenhower was posted as the Chief Military Aide to General Douglas MacArthur, and accompanied him to the Philippines in 1935, where he was assistant military advisor to the Philippines government in developing their army.
In December of 1939, Eisenhower returned to the United States and became the Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion of the 15th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis, Washington, later becoming the Regimental Executive Officer.
He was promoted to Colonel in March of 1941, and assigned as Chief of Staff to the newly activated IX Corps under Major General Kenyon Joyce.
Then in June of 1941, he was appointed Chief of Staff for General Walter Krueger, Commander of the 3rd Army at Fort Sam Houston.
Eisenhower participated in the Louisiana Maneuvers, a series of major U. S. Army exercises held in northern and west central Louisiana from August to September of 1941…
…and he was promoted to Brigadier General on September 29th of 1941.
Eisenhower was assigned to the General Staff in Washington, DC, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, where he served until June 1942, with the responsibility to create war plans to defeat Japan and Germany.
After going to London in May of 1942 with the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces, Lt. General Henry Arnold, to assess the effectiveness of the Theater Command in Europe, he returned to London in June of 1942 as the Commanding General of the European Theater of Operations, and was promoted to Lt. General on July 7th of 1942.
Then in November of 1942, Eisenhower was appointed the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force of the North African Theater of Operations through the new Allied Expeditionary Force Headquarters.
Under the command of Lt. General Eisenhower, Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa took place from the 8th through the 16th of November of 1942, and was planned in the underground headquarters at the Rock of Gibraltar.
Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula.
By December of 1943, President Roosevelt had chosen Eisenhower, by this time a four-star general, to be the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
He was tasked with planning and carrying out Operation Overlord, the Allied assault on the coast of Normandy, starting with the D-Day landings on June 6th of 1944.
Eisenhower was promoted to the highest officer rank in the Army of 5-star General, known as “General of the Army,” on December 20th of 1944.
By the end of the War in Europe on May 8th of 1945, Eisenhower commanded all Allied Forces.
After World War II ended, Eisenhower was appointed Military Governor of the American Occupation Zone, located primarily in southern Germany, and headquartered at the IG Farben building in Frankfurt, the world’s largest office building in Europe until the 1950s.
Besides documenting evidence of the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps for the Nuremburg Trials, he arranged for the distribution of American food and medical equipment in response to the post-war devastation in Germany.
Eisenhower went back to Washington, DC, in November of 1945 to replace General George C. Marshall as Chief of Staff of the Army.
Eisenhower became President of Columbia University in 1948, and one of his accomplishments there was establishing the Institute of War and Peace Studies.
Eisenhower became the Supreme Commander of NATO in December of 1952, and was given operational command of NATO forces in Europe.
He retired from the Army on June 3rd of 1952, and was also elected President of the United States in November of 1952.
He held the office of President of the United States from 1953 – 1961.
Eisenhower gave his final televised address as President on January 17th of 1961, one in which he raised the issues of the Cold War, the role of the U. S. Armed Forces, and raising the alarm about the need to guard against the unwarranted influence of the Military-Industrial complex.
He was also a published author, writing books about World War II, his Presidency and his personal life.
Eisenhower died on March 28th of 1969 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, from Congestive Heart Failure.
After numerous viewings of his body around Washington, he was returned to Abilene, Kansas via a special funeral train, and laid to rest inside the Place of Meditation on the grounds of the Eisenhower Presidential Center.
As mentioned previously, Union General Lew Wallace and former Governor of New Mexico Territory represents the State of Indiana in the National Statuary Hall.
He was best known to the general public for writing “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ” in 1880.
Lew Wallace was born in April of 1827 in Brookville, Indiana.
Wallace’s father David was a graduate of West Point, and after he left the military in 1822, he moved to Brookville where he became a lawyer and entered politics, serving in the Indiana General Assembly, later becoming the State’s Lieutenant Governor, Governor and a member of Congress.
After moving to Covington, Indiana in 1832, Lew’s mother Esther died from tuberculosis in 1834.
His father remarried in 1836, to Zerelda Gray Sanders Wallace, who later became a prominent suffragist and temperance advocate.
In 1837, when he was 10, the family moved to Indianapolis when his father became Governo
By 1846, at the start of the Mexican-American War, Lew Wallace was studying law at his father’s law office, but he left there in order to become a 2nd Lieutenant for the Marion Volunteers on June 19th of 1846, a local militia group that he was already a part of, until he departed that service in the military, after not seeing combat, on June 15th of 1847, and returned to Indiana to pursue law.
Wallace was admitted to the Bar in February of 1849, and he established a law practice in Covington, Indiana.
In 1851, he was elected the prosecuting attorney of Indiana’s 1st Congressional District.
From 1849 to 1853, his law office was in the Fountain County Clerk’s Building, said to have been built in 1842, and known today as the Lew Wallace Law Office.
He resigned from that position in 1853 to move to Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he continued to practice law and was elected to a two-year term in the Indiana Senate in 1856.
The General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, a National Historic Landmark, contains his personal mementoes and houses the Ben Hur Museum as well.
Wallace organized an independent Militia called the Crawfordsville Guards, later called the Montgomery Guards, which would later form the core of the 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, his first military command during the Civil War.
Wallace adopted the Zouave uniform and training style of the elite units of the French Army in Algeria for the unit.
Wallace began his full-time military career shortly after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, which took place on April 12th of 1861, considered the beginning of the Civil War.
His 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment was mustered into the Union Army two-weeks later, on April 25th of 1861, and he received a commission as a Colonel the next day.
On June 5th of 1861, his regiment won a minor battle at Romney, West Virginia, near Cumberland, Maryland, leading to the Confederate evacuation of Harper’s Ferry on June 18th.
Wallace was promoted to Brigadier General in September of 1861, and given command of a brigade.
On February 4th and 5th of 1862, Union troops made their way towards the Confederate Fort Henry on the Tennessee River in western Tennessee.
Wallace’s brigade was ordered to occupy Fort Heiman, called an uncompleted Confederate fort across the river from Fort Henry.
They watched from Fort Heiman as Union troops attacked Fort Henry on February 6th, resulting in a Union Victory and the Confederate surrender of Fort Henry.
Wallace was left in command of Fort Henry as another general moved troops overland towards Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River.
Then on February 13th, Wallace received the order to move out towards the Cumberland River, and his brigades took positions in the center of the Union Line, facing Fort Donelson.
Wallace’s decisions in the battlefield led to checking the Confederate assault and stabilizing the Union defensive line.
He was promoted to Major General, and became the youngest Major General in the Union Army.
Wallace was the 3rd Division Commander under General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Shiloh, which took place on April 6th of 1862.
There was controversy surrounding Wallace’s actions in the field concerning whether or not he followed General Grant’s orders that led to a significant setback in his military career, even though overall Shiloh was considered a Union victory because Confederate forces ended up retreating, and ending their hopes of blocking the Union advance into northern Mississippi.
Wallace’s most notable service during the Civil War was said to have been the Battle of Monocacy, which took place on July 9th of 1864 near Frederick, Maryland, in which even though they were defeated by Confederate troops, Wallace’s men were able to delay a Confederate march towards Washington, DC, for a day giving the city time to organize its defenses and force the Confederates to retreat to Virginia.
Among other duties after the Civil War ended, Wallace was appointed to the military commission that investigated the Lincoln assassination conspirators that began in May of 1865, and ended on June 30th of 1865 after finding all eight conspirators guilty.
In 1867, Wallace returned to Indiana to practice law, but it no longer appealed to him, so he turned to politics.
He lost two Congressional elections, in 1868 and 1870, but as a reward for supporting the candidacy of President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Wallace was appointed Governor of the New Mexico Territory, a position in which he served from August of 1878 to March of 1881.
From May 19th of 1881 to March 4th of 1885, Wallace served as the U. S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) in Constantinople (now Istanbul).
As an author, Lew Wallace was best known for writing “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ” in 1880…
…which was turned into an award-winning movie in 1959 starring Charlton Heston as the wealthy Jewish Prince, Ben-Hur.
Wallace returned to Crawfordsville, Indiana, from the Ottoman Empire.
Among other pursuits, he was given the credit for building the Blacheme in 1895, a 7-story apartment building in Indianapolis.
He lived in Crawfordsville until his death in February of 1905, where he was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery there.
I am bringing forward unlikely pairs of historical figures who are represented in the National Statuary Hall who have things in common with each other, as mentioned at the beginning of this post.
In this pairing, both men didn’t see the theater of war they were prepared for, as Eisenhower missed out on the action in Europe in World War I because the war ended as he was receiving his orders to go to France, and Wallace was an officer in a volunteer militia in June of 1846 in readiness to fight in the Mexican-American War, but he never saw combat, leaving volunteer service almost exactly a year later.
Both Eisenhower and Wallace were involved in the entirety of their major wars, with Eisenhower being involved in World War II directly from the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th of 1941 to its end on September 2nd of 1945 and Wallace was involved in the American Civil War from its beginning with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12th of 1861 and its end on April 9th of 1865 and were successful generals in their respective wars.
They were both involved in events concerning crimes in the aftermath of their wars, with Eisenhower being involved in the documentation of evidence of Nazi atrocities for the Nuremburg trials as the Military Governor of the American Occupation Zone and Wallace was appointed to the military commission that investigated the Lincoln assassination conspirators from May to June of 1865, that found all eight conspirators guilty.
Both men were Chief Executives, Eisenhower as President of the United States, and Wallace as Governor of the New Mexico Territory.
Lastly, both men were published authors, although in different genres of literature.
In the next pairing from the National Statuary Hall, I am going to showcase Missouri’s Francis Preston Blair and Florida’s Edmund Kirby Smith for things they have in common.
I have encountered the incredible engineering of bridges, many of which are still in use today, and many of which are not, throughout the course of my research.
I am bringing forward the question in this post for your consideration:
Could these bridges have been constructed when we are told they were constructed by the people credited with their existence, or were they built by a previous advanced civilization unknown to us that actually built the world’s infrastructure?
Some of these bridges are clearly in the style of what we consider Old World architecture as we will see, said to have been constructed in the mid-to-late 1800s
Many of these bridges were said to have been built quite recently starting in early 1900s, and are quite sophisticated in their design and function.
First, I am going to look at John Augustus Roebling and Ralph Modjeski, famous bridge-builders in our historical narrative.
John Augustus Roebling was an incredibly prolific bridge-builder.
This is what we are told about his life and work.
John A. Roebling was born in the Prussian city of Muhlhausen in 1806, and starting in 1824, he received an education in architecture, engineering, and hydraulics in two semesters at Berlin’s Bauakademie, or Building Academy.
We are told that after working as a designer and supervisor in the construction of military roads for four years until 1829, he returned home to prepare for his engineer examination, which he was said to have never taken.
He ended up emigrating to America in 1831 with a group of Prussians including his brother, and the two of them ended up landing in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and purchased land to establish a German settlement, which they named Saxonburg, and John Augustus Roebling was a farmer there for about 5 years.
Then, in 1839, he went back into engineering, starting with improvement of river navigation and the building of canals, and in 1840, he connected with suspension bridge designer Charles Ellet, Jr, to help with the design of a suspension bridge near Philadelphia.
He began producing wire rope in Saxonburg in 1841 for use in such projects as suspension bridges.
A suspension bridge is one where the deck of the bridge is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders.
In 1844, Roebling was said to have won a bid to replace the wooden canal aqueduct over the Allegheny River with the Allegheny Aqueduct in Pittsburgh, the first wire suspension bridge he was credited with.
The next bridge project Roebling was credited with building was what is known as the Smithfield Street Bridge in Pittsburgh, with construction starting in 1845.
The Smithfield Street Bridge is a lenticular truss bridge, in which top and bottom chords are curved, which gives the truss an oval or lens shape.
Some time around 1848, he was said to have built a large industrial complex for his growing wire production company in Trenton, New Jersey…
…and this wire production complex was said to have been one of the inspirations for the famous slogan on the Lower Trenton Bridge “Trenton Makes, the World Takes.”
The Lower Trenton Bridge is a truss bridge, a bridge where the load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, which is a structure of connected-elements, usually forming triangular units.
The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge connects Cincinnati, Ohio, with Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River.
We are told that after the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company was incorporated in 1846, Roebling was asked to build a bridge, which was perceived as necessary due to the increase in commerce between Ohio and Kentucky that led to highly congested steamboat traffic and constriction of the economy.
We are told that it first formally opened on January 1st of 1867, which would have been less than two years after the end of the American Civil War.
At the time the bridge opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world.
The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge on the left reminds me in appearance of the famous Tower Bridge in London, England,on the right, which was said to have been built between 1886 and 1894.
The other famous bridge that John A. Roebling received the credit for was the Brooklyn Bridge.
We are told he started the design work on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1867, but that on June 28th of 1869, when he was standing at the edge of the dock to fix the location of where the bridge would be built, his foot was crushed by an arriving ferry, requiring the amputation of his injured toes.
His death on July 22nd of 1869 was caused by tetanus after he refused medical treatment.
The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge was said to have been completed by his son, Washington Roebling.
The Brooklyn Bridge on the left reminds me in appearance of the Sidi M’ Cid Bridge on the right in Constantine, Algeria, known as the city of bridges.
The Sidi M’ Cid Bridge was at one time was the highest suspension bridge in the world.
Ralph Modjeski is the next prolific bridge-builder I am going to take a look at, a Polish-American civil engineer who was said to have specialized in bridges.
I first encountered Ralph Modjeski’s name and reputation when I was doing research on the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys.
One of the bridges he was credited with is in Thebes, Illinois, on the Mississippi River, and located near Cairo, Illinois, which sites at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, in a part of Illinois that has been long referred to as “Little Egypt.”
Like Cairo, Thebes was said to have been named for the Egyptian city of the same name, and is perhaps best-known for the Thebes Bridge, a five-span cantilever truss railroad bridge said to have been built for the Union Pacific Railroad and opened for use in 1905, with its construction starting in 1902
A cantilever bridge is one that is built using structures that project horizontally into space and is only supported at one end by what are called “cantilevers.”
Large cantilever bridges designed to carry road or rail traffic use structural-steel trusses or box girders made from pre-stressed concrete.
Ralph Modjeski was born in Poland in 1861, and emigrated to America with his mother and stepfather in 1876.
He returned to Europe and studied at the “l’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées,” or “School of Bridges and Roads,” in Paris, France.
He received his American citizenship while he was in Paris in 1883, and he graduated first in his class from the “School of Bridges and Roads” in 1885.
Upon his return to America, Ralph Modjeski worked first for George Morison, an attorney-turned-civil-engineer known as the “Father of American Bridge-Building.”
Ralph Modjeski opened his own in Chicago in 1893, the same year as the World Columbian Exposition, and his first project as Chief Engineer was said to be the railroad bridge across the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa to Rock Island, Illinois, called the “Government Bridge,” said to have been completed in 1896.
The “Government Bridge” is a double-decker steel-truss bridge, with the upper-deck of this bridge used for railroad traffic, and the lower-deck of the bridge used for vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
The “Government Bridge” has a swing-section to accommodate traffic navigating the river, which can rotate 360-degrees for river traffic, and is one of the oldest bridges of its kind still in use on the Mississippi River.
Besides the Thebes Bridge, Modjeski was credited with the:
The Benjamin Franklin Bridge, a suspension bridge connecting Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, opening in 1904, and one of four primary bridges between Philadelphia and southern New Jersey…
…as well as the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge over the Delaware River in Northeast Philadelphia, a steel-tied arch and double-leaf bascule bridge that opened in 1929.
A tied-arch bridge is one in which the outward horizontal forces caused by tension of the arch ends to a foundation countered by equal tension of its own gravity and any element of the total deck that supports it. The arch has strengthened chords that run to a strong part of the deck structure or to independent tie-rods below the arch ends.
The definition of a bascule bridge is one in which there is a moveable counterweight that continually balances a single- or double-leaf, or -span, throughout its upward swing to provide clearance for boat traffic.
Modjeski was also credited with being a consulting engineer for the Trans-Bay Bridge, or Bay Bridge, between San Francisco and Oakland in California, a complex of bridges including steel-truss cantilever- and suspension-style bridges.
When it opened in 1936, the upper-deck carrying vehicular traffic and the lower-deck carrying commuter trains until the Key System mass transit service abandoned rail service in 1958, at which time the lower-deck was converted to all-road traffic as well.
As Chief Engineer of the project, Ralph Modjeski was also credited with the design of the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans, Louisiana, said to have been part of Long’s legacy as Governor of Louisiana as part of his unprecedented public works program, which would have taken place during the Great Depression.
It is a cantilevered, steel-truss bridge carrying six-lanes of U.S. 90 and two-tracks of the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad across the Mississippi River, said to have been constructed between January of 1933 and December of 1935.
Speaking of San Francisco, it was said to have been founded by Spanish colonists in 1776, who built a fortification called “El Presidio Real of San Francisco,” or “The Royal Fortress of Saint Francis of Assisi,” at what is now simply called the Presidio, a park and former U. S. military installation until 1994, which it was transferred to the National Park Service.
I looked at a map of the Presidio, and noticed “Fort Point” at its tip, where Highway 101 crosses the San Francisco Bay over the Golden Gate Bridge…
…and sure enough, I found what looks like a star fort tucked away underneath the base of the bridge.
Battery Boutelle is also on the Presidio Grounds beside the bridge.
This is what it looks like inside the structure at Fort Point underneath this end of the Golden Gate Bridge, including a lighthouse…
…which reminded me of Fort Wadsworth’s Battery Weed, on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge crossing over to Brooklyn in the narrow channel between Lower New York Bay and Upper New York Bay.
Since I knew that Fort Hamilton is located right next to the base of the Verrazano Narrows bridge on the Brooklyn side…
…I looked on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge since I consistently find star forts in one or more pairs around the world, and I found Battery Spencer on the other side of the bay right next to the bridge…
…and beneath the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, I found this old-looking structure with solar panels, and stone steps, which is the Lime Point Lighthouse, said to have been built in 1883 and automated since 1961.
Also, this is a comparison of the Golden Gate Bridge on the top, with the Verrazano Narrows Bridge on the bottom, and they are both suspension bridges.
Was there a functional relationship was between bridges, star forts, batteries, and lighthouses that served an integrated purpose as seen in these examples that are exactly the same in San Francisco on the west coast of the United States and New York City on the east coast?
Or was the similarity the result of random occurrences, as we are taught to believe, like the aforementioned Spanish colonists who founded San Francisco in 1776 and built the Presidio as a fortification?
The definition of random includes, among others, “lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern.’
Our historical narrative leads us to believe that all of the Earth’s infrastructure came into existence as a result of random factors, like some guy in the past bought the land upon which _________________ eventually became a large city.
Next, let’s take a look at what’s found at the location of what is nicknamed “The Soo,” an interesting area on the International Border referring to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the northern terminus of I-75, which goes all the way to Miami, Florida.
Here we find the Soo Locks, the largest waterway traffic system on Earth, and are called the “Linchpin of the Great Lakes,” allowing ships to travel between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes, and where Lake Superior meets Lake Huron.
The Soo Locks are considered a wonder of engineering and human ingenuity.
They by-pass the rapids of St. Mary’s River, where the river drops 21-feet, or about 6.4-meters, over hard red sandstone in a short 3/4-mile, or 1.2-kilometer, stretch.
The first locks were said to have been built here in 1855, and operated by the State of Michigan until transferred to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1881, who own, maintain and operate the St. Mary’s Falls Canal, within which the locks are located.
The Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge connects the United States and Canada, which permits vehicular traffic to pass over the locks.
It is a truss-arch bridge with a suspended deck, with the years between 1960 and 1962 given as its construction dates.
The total length of the bridge is 2.8-miles or 4.5-kilometers.
The Sault Ste. Marie International Railroad bridge runs parallel to the International Bridge, and was said to have been built almost 100-years earlier, in 1887.
The railroad bridge has: nine camelback spans; a plate-girder overpass and plate-girder spans; a double-leaf bascule bridge; a vertical-lift bridge; and a swing-bridge and carries a single set of train-tracks.
Now, let’s break down the types of bridge into component parts that we haven’t talked about already.
Firstly, “camelback spans” are trusses that have polygonal upper chords of exactly five slopes.
We are told this saves material, and that the greatest depth of the truss is at the center of the span, where it is most required.
Next, plate-girder spans and overpasses utilize a steel-beam in their construction.
A Vertical-Lift Bridge is a type of movable bridge in which the span rises vertically while remaining parallel to the deck of the bridge.
Lastly, a swing-bridge is a type of movable bridge that has a vertical locating pin and support ring as its primary structural support, usually at or near its center-of-gravity.
I have encountered other examples of the sophisticated engineering of bridges like these in the Great Lakes region, like the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge.
It spans the Duluth Ship Canal and Minnesota Point, and was said to have been first constructed between 1901 and 1905, and modified between 1929 and 1930.
While it has been a vertical-lift bridge since 1930, the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge started out as a transporter bridge, also known as an aerial transfer bridge, said to be the first of two of its kind in the United States.
It was a type of movable bridge that carried a segment of roadway across a river.
I encountered the “Portage Lake Lift Bridge” when I was researching Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, where it connects the cities of Houghton and Hancock across Portage Lake, which is part of the waterway which cuts across the Keweenaw Peninsula with a canal linking the five-miles to Lake Superior to the northwest.
The vertical-lift bridge was said to have first been built in 1895 to replace a damaged wooden swing bridge that was built in that location in 1875, and that the current steel bridge replaced the previous steel bridge in 1959.
It is the world’s heaviest and widest double-decked, vertical-lift bridge.
The Portage Lake Lift Bridge is on the only land-route across the waterway, which is U. S. Highway 41, that like I-75, also originates in Miami, Florida.
The oldest bridge crossing the Missouri River was the first Hannibal Bridge, said to have been completed in 1869, two-years after its construction started in 1867, and four-years after the end of the American Civil War.
It was the first permanent rail crossing of the Missouri River, and it established Kansas City as a major city and rail center.
After the completion of the Hannibal Bridge, we are told the need for the Kansas City Union Depot arose.
After all, soon after the Hannibal Bridge opened, it carried eight railroads shipping freight to major trade centers in the east, like St. Louis, Chicago, and New York.
This is a historical map of what was called the “Natural Port of Kansas City,” with the West Bottoms District highlighted in blue, and the freight houses of 12 different railroads are listed by number in the red square on the left-hand-side, and the locations by number of each freight house in the red square that is contained completely within the West Bottoms District.
Here are a number of other bridges I have come across in the course of doing research, though there are countless more examples than the ones I am sharing.
The Dubuque Railroad Bridge is currently operated by the Canadian National Railway, who purchased the Illinois Central Railroad in 1999.
It is a single-track railroad bridge that crosses the Mississippi River between Dubuque Iowa, and East Dubuque, Illinois, that has a swing-span.
The original swing bridge was said to have been built in 1868, and we are told that it was rebuilt in 1898.
The Joliet Railroad Bridge is a vertical lift-bridge over the Illinois River, said to have been built in 1932, which would have been in the middle of the Great Depression, which was considered to have started in August of 1929 and lasted until March 1933.
The Tower Bridge is also a vertical-lift bridge, and connects Sacramento and West Sacramento across the Sacramento River.
The construction of the Tower Bridge as a replacement bridge for the 1911 ‘M’ Street bridge was said to have started in 1934 and first opened in 1935.
This also would have been around the time of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II.
The original 1911 bridge was described as a “swing-through truss railroad bridge” that was determined to be inadequate as the result of Sacramento’s population growth doubling between 1910 and 1935, and the city’s concern for needing a better crossing over the Sacramento River in case of war.
Alfred Eichler was credited as the architect of the Tower Bridge, and its architectural-style described as a rare use of “Streamline Moderne,” a style of “Art Deco” that emerged in the 1930s.
The two towers of the bridge alone are 160-feet, or 49-meters, -high.
The Joe Page Bridge in Hardin, Illnois, named after a local politician who lived between 1845 and 1938, is a vertical-lift bridge that links Greene and Calhoun Counties across the Illinois River.
It’s lift-span is just a little over 308-feet, or 94-meters, -long, making it the longest span of this type in the world.
The bridge was said to have been built in 1931 by an “unknown” builder, though the State of Illinois Division of Highways is given credit for the engineering & design work.
The Joe Page Bridge is the southernmost of three vertical-lift bridges on the Illinois River used by Illinois Route 100, which makes up much of the Illinois River Road, a U. S. National Scenic By-way.
The Florence Bridge on Illinois Route 100 connects the town of Florence, Illinois, to Scott County, Illnois.
The population of Florence was 71 at the time of the 2000 Census, and Scott County is the fourth least-populated county in the State of Illinois.
The Florence Bridge was said to have first opened in 1929…
…and like the Joe Page Bridge is also listed as “Builder Unknown.”
The northernmost of the three vertical-lift bridges crossing the Illinois River is the Beardstown Bridge, located at Beardstown, Illinois, between Schuyler County, Illinois, and Beardstown.
The current bridge was said to have been built in 1955, and rehabilitated in 1985.
I can’t find out much information on the Beardstown Bridge either.
The BNSF Nooksack River Bridge is a swing-bridge for the railroad in Ferndale, Washington.
BNSF is the largest freight railroad network in North America, and Amtrak uses it as well.
The bridge used to rotate, but it doesn’t anymore.
It has come to be known as the Ferndale Metallica Bridge because over the last thirty-years, someone has been painting Metallica logos on it.
When I started looking for information on the construction date for the bridge, the only thing I could find referencing a construction date was that it was said to have first been built in 1890 and a replacement date of 1957, with a question mark.
The Pacific Highway Interstate Bridge consists of a pair of steel-truss, vertical-lift bridges that carry Interstate 5 over the Columbia River between Vancouver and Portland.
Construction was said to have started in 1915 and opened in 1917 as a single bridge carrying two-way traffic.
I would like to point out that would have been in the middle of World War I, which started in 1914 and ended in 1918.
We are told the second bridge opened in 1958.
The Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge 9.6 crosses the Columbia River into Portland just below what is called the the triangular junction.
The 2,807-foot, or 856-meter, -long railroad bridge, which was said to have been built between 1906 and 1908, has a swing-span which pivots on its base to let taller ships pass through.
The 9.6 in the bridge’s name refers to the distance between the bridge, and Portland’s Union Station, which was said to have been built between 1890 and 1896 in the Romanesque Revival architectural style.
I want to end this post with some thoughts about bascule bridges.
They first came to my awareness about a year ago when a video about two of Cleveland’s bascule bridges popped up on my YouTube feed.
I didn’t know about them before then.
What really got to my attention is that the bascule bridges being highlighted were long-abandoned, and left permanently in a raised-state.
I can’t help but wonder if this is a message from whoever was behind the deconstruction and reattribution of the sophisticated infrastructure of the original civilization and energy grid system, and is giving it and us the middle finger.
Perhaps not, but something to consider given what has taken place here to destroy the infrastructure and the memory of the original civilization.
In this series called “Snapshots from the National Statuary Hall,” I am showcasing unlikely pairs of historical figures in the National Statuary Hall at the U. S. Capitol who have things in common with each other.
In this segment, I am pairing John Gorrie, a physician and scientist representing the State of Florida with William King representing Maine, a merchant among other things, and Maine’s first governor.
In the first segment of this series, I paired Michigan’s Gerald Ford, a former President of the United States, and Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, the former President of the Confederate States of America; and in the second segment, I paired Dr. Norman Borlaug, Ph.D, often called the “Father of the Green Revolution; and Colorado’s Dr. Florence R. Sabin, M.D, remembered as a pioneer for women in science; and in the third segment I paired Louisiana’s controversial Governor, Huey P. Long, and Alabama’s Helen Keller, a deaf-blind woman who gain prominence as an American author, lecturer, political activist, and disability rights activist; and in the fourth segment, I paired Henry Clay, described as an attorney and statesman from Kentucky, and Lewis Cass, described as an American military officer, politician and statesman from Michigan.
Like Henry Clay and Lewis Cass in the last segment, John Gorrie and William King were contemporaries of each other.
King was the older of the two men by 35-years , but they died within a few years of each other in the 1850s.
Florida’s John B. Gorrie was a physician and scientist, credited with the invention of mechanical refrigeration.
John B. Gorrie was born to Scottish parents in October of 1803 in St. Kitts and Nevis, which were among the first islands in the Caribbean to be colonized by Europeans.
St. Kitts and Nevis is the smallest sovereign state and federation in the western hemisphere, in area and population, in the British Commonwealth, with the British Monarch as its head-of-state.
Gorrie spent his childhood in South Carolina, and received his higher education at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York, also known as the Fairfield Academy.
The Trustees of the Fairfield Academy had petitioned the Trinity Episcopal Church in Fairfield in 1812 for a funding grant with which to establish a college of liberal culture under Episcopalian auspices, but the petition was denied.
According to what we are told, the Trinity Episcopal Church in Fairfield was built in 1808.
The following year, a different petition to the Corporation of Trinity Church granted the funding for the theological seminary at the Fairfield Academy, until the Theological School was transferred to Geneva, New York, in 1821, at what later became the Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
The origin of the Corporation of Trinity Church was in 1697, when Governor Benjamin Fletcher established the Church of England as New York’s official religion, and leased property in Lower Manhattan that was known as the “King’s Farm” to the newly established Trinity Church.
Eight-years later, Queen Anne granted the entire parcel of land to the church outright, and the Episcopal parish was located at corner of Wall Street and Broadway.
With the Queen’s grant, Trinity Church became the second-largest landholder in New York, after the Crown itself, and this set-up Trinity Church to become the wealthiest in the North American colonies.
This is a scene of Trinity Church from Broadway in 1915.
In 1894, the Trinity Corporation was exposed by a New York Times reporter to have substandard living conditions on their Charlton Street properties.
Even today, Trinity Church is one of the largest landowners in New York City, now under the name of Trinity Real Estate.
In July of 2018, the Walt Disney Company acquired the rights to develop 4 Hudson Square to become the new site of Disney’s New York operations from Trinity Church Wall Street.
Back to John B. Gorrie.
He moved to Apalachicola, Florida in 1833, where he was a resident physician at two hospitals, and served as a council member; postmaster; President of the Bank of Pensacola’s Apalachicola branch; secretary of his Masonic Lodge; and was a founding vestryman of Trinity Episcopal Church, that is still in use today, located at the corner of ‘D’ And 6th Street in Gorrie Square.
Dr. Gorrie’s medical research involved Yellow Fever, for which the prevalent hypothesis at the time was that mal-aria – or ‘bad air’ – caused diseases.
Hurged the draining of swamps and cooling of a sickrooms based on this theory, and to this end he experimented with making artificial ice.
Gorrie first mechanically produced ice in 1844, and by 1850, he was able to mechnically produce ice the size of bricks.
He was granted the patent on May 6th of 1851 for a “machine to make ice.”
Just as a point of reference, the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London started on May 1st of 1851 and went until October 15th of 1851.
John B. Gorrie died, however, in 1855, not long after his invention was patented.
He was unable to raise the money needed to manufacture his machine and everything in his life went south for him, including his health.
One of the two statues representing Maine in the National Statuary Hall is one of William King.
William King was an American merchant, ship builder, army officer and statesman from Bath, Maine, who became the first Governor of Maine when Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820.
King’s father Richard was a merchant and ship-owner, and he was born in February of 1768 at Scarborough, Maine.
Maine was part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay of Britain’s colony in America at that time in history.
He was said to have attended the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, for a term, though he was largely self-educated.
Phillips Academy is one of the oldest incorporated secondary-schools in the United States, having been established in 1778 and considered to be the most elite boarding school in America.
In 1787, King left Scarborough at the age of 19 to live with his sister and brother-in-law in Topsham, Maine.
Between the years of 1780 and 1820, the District of Maine was the governmental designation for what became the State of Maine when it was admitted to the Union in 1820.
The District of Maine was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which was admitted to the Union as a State in February of 1788.
Interestingly, when I was looking information up on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts becoming a State in 1788, I encountered the Massachusetts Act banning “Any African or Negro,” which was made law on March 26th of 1788, apparently in response to Prince Hall leading black masons to petition the court in 1788 to put an end to the slave trade.
Two things I want to draw to your attention in the wording of this law is that first, “it does not apply to African or Negro that are subjects of the Emperor of Morocco or a citizen of one of the States that can prove it.”
Why would subjects of the Emperor of Morocco be specifically mentioned in this law?
What if what became known as America was originally part of Morocco, and this knowledge deliberately removed from our collective awareness and the civilization was intentionally destroyed?
The second is that this law was punitive towards the so-called African or Negroes themselves, not slave traders. If they didn’t leave within ten days, they would be committed to a house of correction, and if they continued to stay, they were to be whipped and then forced to leave in ten days.
This is a 1775 map of the Shawmut Peninsula, which we know as Boston, and of which Beacon Hill was the center.
Land reclamation took place here roughly between 1820 and 1900 to create land, where there was originally water, around the original peninsula.
The area originally had three hills.
Pemberton Hill and Fort Vernon Hill were near Beacon Hill, and both of these hills were levelled for Beacon Hill development.
Beacon Hill itself was reduced from 130-feet, or 42-meters, to 80-feet, or 24-meters, between 1807 and 1832.
Boston’s Fort Independence was the location where Prince Hall, and fourteen other men of African-American descent, became Freemasons in their initiation into the British Army Lodge 441 of the Irish Registry, after having been declined admittance into the Boston St. John’s Lodge.
He was the founder of Prince Hall Freemasonry, and the African Grand Lodge of North America.
Until Prince Hall found a way in, Moorish Americans were denied admittance into Freemasonry. There are 360-degrees in Moorish Masonry, compared to the 33-degrees of Freemasonry.
Masonry is based on Moorish Science, which also includes the study of natural and spiritual laws, esoteric symbolism, natal and judicial astrology, and zodiac masonry.
With regards to zodiac masonry, this is where the perfect alignments of infrastructure on earth with the sky comes from – the consummate alignment of earth with heaven that is seen around the world – like the lunar roll along the top of this recumbant stone in Crowthie Muir in Scotland…
…and the alignment with the Orion constellation at the ancient stone circle of Nabta Playa in Egypt.
The Moors were the custodians of the Ancient Egyptian mysteries, according to George G. M. James in his book “Stolen Legacy.”
You see these precise astronomical alignments with what would be considered more modern infrastructure as well.
I mean, someone knows about the Moors and what happened to them.
They are just not telling us directly.
Back to William King.
In 1795, William King became active politically, representing Topsham in the Massachusetts House of Representatives until 1799.
In 1799, King moved to Bath, Maine, where he served as Bath’s Representative in the Massachusetts Legislature in 1800, and then as Senator for Lincoln County in 1807 to 1811.
King worked his way up the ladder from his beginnings working on the family farm and in various mills.
He was credited with building at least 14 ships, and was either owner or part-owner of 35 merchant ships involved in trade with England, the West Indies, and various ports in the United States.
He married his wife, Ann Frazier of Boston, shortly after moving to Bath, and were said to have built their home, “Stone House,” overlooking the wharves on the Kennebec River where his merchant fleet was docked.
King was considered Bath’s leading citizen, and besides hosting parties in his mansion, he started the South Church in 1805, initially a Congregational Church but we are told later abandoned by them and purchased by the Irish Catholics.
The South Church was said to have been burned down by an angry mob during what is known to history as the Anti-Catholic Riot in 1854, when a group of local citizens was enraged to violence by a travelling street preacher named John Orr, who called himself the “Angel Gabriel,” preaching anti-Catholic sentiment in town.
At the beginning of the War of 1812, William King became a Major-General in the Massachusetts militia in charge of the District of Maine.
He was said to have played a key role in enlisting troops and organizing coastal defenses to protect the Maine coast against attack from the British.
He also was a leader in recruiting efforts for the regular army, for which he was made a Colonel in the U. S. Army.
In 1813, King started a petition process for Maine to become separate from Massachusetts.
King was re-elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1816, and in 1818, the approval was secured for Maine to become a separate state.
The Missouri Compromise allowed Maine to become a state on March 15th of 1820 and shortly thereafter, William King was elected Governor.
William King was also a Scottish Rite Freemason, and he became the first Grand Master of Maine in June of 1820 after becoming Maine’s first Governor.
President James Monroe named King one of three commissioners in May of 1821 to settle land claims resulting from the Adams-Onis Treaty, a position for which King resigned the Governorship of Maine and held until 1824.
The 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty was a treaty between the United States and Spain that ceded Florida to the United States, and defined the boundary between the U. S. and New Spain.
King was appointed by President Andrew Jackson in 1828 as Customs Collector of Bath.
The job of Customs Collector was to collect taxes on goods imported from other countries.
The construction of the historic Customs House in Bath was said to have started in 1852 and completed in 1858.
The building was made out of granite with iron beams inside the stone wall, and considered unusual for the time because of its “fire-proof” construction.
Even though King’s formal education was limited, he served as a Trustee for both Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, which was chartered in 1794…
…and for Waterville College, now called Colby College, which was established in 1813.
It’s interesting to note that in 1858, former Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who represents the state of Mississippi in the National Statuary Hall, received an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, for his contributions as an army officer, Secretary of War, and as a U. S. Representative and Senator.
In early 1858, Davis had had a severe illness involving the inflammation of his left eye which threatened the loss of his eye, and went to Portland, Maine, to recover his health in the summer of 1858, during which time he received the honorary degree.
In June of 1852, William King died at home, and was buried in Bath’s Maple Grove Cemetery.
The Governor King Monument pictured here was said to have been erected in 1855 in memory of him at his burial site.
For King’s funeral, the Masonic Lodge of Bath organized a procession for him to his burial site which included a brass band, and state and local officials.
As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am showcasing unlikely pairs of historical figures who are represented in the National Statuary Hall who have things in common with each other, as mentioned at the beginning of this post.
In this pairing, both men attended Academies for their education, with John Gorrie attending Fairfield Academy in New York State for his medical education, which was affiliated with the Trinity Church and the Corporation of Trinity Church through its theological school, and William King attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts for his formal education, which is considered to be the most elite boarding school in America.
Both John Gorrie and William King were considered leading citizens of their respective communities, involved in founding their churches and in the lives of their communities in other ways…
And both men, like Henry Clay and Lewis Cass in the last segment, were acknowledged Freemasons and very active in the Grand Lodges of their states.
The next pairing from the National Statuary Hall that I am going to showcase for things in common is General Dwight Eisenhower for Kansas and General Lew Wallace for Indiana.
I am giving an overview of history since 1945 in this series, with an eye towards uncovering the patterns that give insight into the world we live in today, and in this part will be focusing on events that took place between 1993 and 1995.
So far, patterns uncovered since 1945 show events and people being manipulated for particular outcomes, and deceiving us about what was really going on to gain our consent…
…seeing hereditary rulers being taken down and replaced with new governments, with examples of like communist, socialist and autocratic-theocratic, leading to genocide and repression of millions of people…
…since the 1980s, multiple events seeding our collective Human consciousness with the notion we could meet a violent and horrible death, anywhere and anytime…
…and at the same experienced the rise of the personal computer, internet, and world-wide web.
Starting in the 1990s, at the same time we saw the fall of the centralized communist systems of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, we saw the rise of war and violence between different ethnic groups in the former republics of the countries, resulting in the genocide of the people…
…and the destruction of infrastructure in this civil and political warfare…
…the First Gulf War in Kuwait…
…violent weather…
…violent earthquakes…
…and airplane, and other transportation disasters as they have been occurring quite frequently from what I have been finding in the historical record in both the 1990s so far, and also in the decade of the 1980s that I looked at in the last part of the series.
I will now pick up the 1990s in 1993, where I left off.
The European Economic Community eliminated trade barriers and created a European Single Market on January 1st of 1993.
It was comprised of the 27 member states of the European Union, and the four non-member states of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.
It referred to the European Union as one territory without any internal borders or regulatory obstacles to the free movement of goods and services, with the stated goal of guaranteeing the free movement of goods, services, capital and people, also known as the “four freedoms.”
EuroNews was launched in Lyons, France, on the same day, a multilingual television news network aimed to cover news from a Pan-European perspective.
This neon-green cube has been the new EuroNews Headquarters since 2015.
I don’t know, what do you think?
It was constructed at the confluence of Lyons’ Rhone and Saone Rivers…
…which is described as being transformed into a dynamic business and commercial hub from what was a run-down and neglected area.
It almost looks as if the old masonry building is being imprisoned in the new architecture!
I can think of another city at the confluence of two rivers that was once a busy commercial hub back in the day.
This city is Cairo, the southernmost point in Illinois, which is situated at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Cairo is largely-abandoned today, and is considered a ghost town.
In its heyday, Cairo was an important city along the steamboat routes and railway lines.
Fort Defiance, described as a Civil War-era fort, was located right at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
On January 3rd, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U. S. President George H. W. Bush signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, also known as START II, banning the use of Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs) on Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).
Funny thing is, the treaty never really went into effect.
While it was ratified by the U. S. Senate in 1996, the Russians ratified it in 2000, and instead withdrew from the treaty in 2002.
The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) came into effect instead in June of 2003 through February of 2011.
It reduced the number of strategic warheads count for each country to 1,700 from 2,200.
The fifth-largest robbery in U. S. History took place on January 5th, which was the theft of $7.4 million stolen from the Brink’s Armored Car depot, in Rochester, New York.
I looked at two big robberies in the last part of this series, the still-unsolved, largest art theft in U. S. history on March 18th of 1990, at which time twelve paintings and a Chinese Shang Dynasty vase, all together worth $100 to $300 million, were stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Art Museum…
…and the City Bonds Robbery in the City of London, which took place on May 2nd of 1990, the largest robbery in world history where a courier was robbed of 301 bearer-bonds, worth 292-million pounds, and 299 of the bonds were ultimately recovered.
The City Bonds Robbery was believed to be a sophisticated global operation which involved the New York Mafia, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and Colombian drug barons.
In the Brinks Robbery, an Irish Priest in New York and an ex-guerilla fighter from Northern Ireland were eventually convicted of the robbery, for the stated reason of helping the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
On the same day as the Brinks’ Robbery, on January 5th, the MV Braer, a Liberian-registered oil tanker, ran aground at Garths Ness in northern Scotland’s Shetland Islands when it was enroute from Bergen, Norway to Quebec, Canada, loaded with 85,000-metric tonnes, or 94,000-tons of crude oil, causing oil to leak into the sea.
The reason given for the oil tanker’s grounding was that it had lost power after seawater contaminated the ship’s heavy fuel two-days earlier, when a pipeline on deck broke loose.
While there was an immediate environmental response, and work was being done to contain and clean-up the spill, it spread northward up the west side of the Shetland Islands.
So there was lots going on here related to the January 5th spill…
…when along came what became known as the Braer Storm, named after the MV Braer, on January 8th, which was the most intense extra-tropical cyclone ever recorded over the North Atlantic, the lowest low ever…
…and was the fastest-deepening, mid-latitude depression in history, with central pressure dropping 78 mbs in a 24-hour period, which resulted in what is called “Explosive Cyclogenesis,” or the explosive genesis of a cyclone, and took place just west of the Shetland Islands.
It caused severe blizzards across most of Scotland, and the final break-up of the MV Braer oil tanker.
Was it just a coincidence that the major environmental disaster of the MV Braer spilling its oil into the sea and the most intense extra-tropical cyclone ever recorded formed within days of each other in the vicinity of the Shetland Islands? Or not.
Something to think about.
The Polish Ferry Jan Heweliusz sank, as a result of hurricane-force winds, off the coast of Rugen in the Baltic Sea on January 14th, the most deadly peace-time maritime disaster involving a Polish ship, killing at least 54 of the passengers and crew.
Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd-president on January 20th.
The first World Trade Center Bombing took place on February 26th.
A truck bomb was blown-up below the North Tower of the complex, in the parking garage.
The truck contained a 1,336-lb (606 kg) urea nitrate-hydrogen, gas-enhanced device, which was said to have been intended to send the North Tower crashing into the South Tower.
This is what the U. S. State Department website says about it:
“On February 26th, a bomb exploded in the parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City. This event was the first indication for the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) that terrorism was evolving from a regional phenomenon outside of the United States to a transnational phenomenon.“
From what the State Department had it say about it, it sounds like the first World Trade Center bombing in February of 1993 marked the beginning of acts of terrorism in the United States, and took place just a little after a month after Bill Clinton took office.
The investigation into the bombing led to ties with Al-Qaeda, and in March of 1994, four men were convicted of carrying out the bombing, which killed six people and injured over 1,000.
Two days after that, on February 28th, the Waco Siege began in Texas.
The Waco Siege involved the law enforcement siege of the Mount Carmel Center compound of the Branch Davidians, located 13-miles, or 21-kilometers, northeast of Waco.
The information that is found in the historical record is that due to suspected stockpiling of illegal weapons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) had obtained a search warrant for the compound, and arrest warrants for the group’s leader, David Koresh, and several others in the group.
When the ATF attempted to serve the warrants, a gunfight ensued, and four officers were killed along with six Branch Davidians.
With the failure of the ATF to implement the search warrant, the FBI initiated a siege of the compound.
After 51-days, the FBI resorted to a tear gas attack to force the Branch Davidians out.
What came next was a fire that engulfed the Mount Carmel Center, that was ultimately officially blamed on the Branch Davidians themselves …
…that resulted in the deaths of 81 Branch Davidians, including women and children.
On March 5th, Macedonian Palair Flight 301 on a flight to Zurich crashed shortly after take-off from Skopje, killing 83 of 97 on-board.
At the time, it was the deadliest plane crash in the history of the country.
The cause of the crash was attributed to atmospheric icing and pilot error.
On March 11th, Janet Reno was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as first female U. S. Attorney General the next day.
The Bombay bombings occurred on March 12th, killing 257 and injuring an estimated 1,400 more.
The Bombay bombings were a series of at least 12 bombings that took place in one day.
The bomb attacks started at 1:30 pm that day, when a powerful car bomb exploded in the basement of the Bombay Stock Exchange building.
The car bomb severely damaged the 28-story stock exchange building and other nearby buildings.
Following the bombing of the stock exchange, car and scooter bombs exploded throughout the city, and suitcase bombs were exploded at three hotels, like the Hotel Sea Rock.
The estimated number of deaths and injuries from the Bombay bombing spree were at least 257 fatalities, and 1,400 injuries.
The Great Blizzard of 1993 took place between March 13th and March 15th, bringing record snowfall all the way from Cuba to Quebec.
Also dubbed “The Storm of the Century,” it formed over the Gulf of Mexico on March 12th, and was notable for its massive size, intensity, and wide-reaching effects.
Heavy snow was reported in places like Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, and Georgia, and the storm also brought hurricane force wind-gusts and record-low barometric pressures.
The 32-year-old actor Brandon Lee’s death took place on March 31st, the son of martial artist and actor, Bruce Lee.
Brandon’s cause-of-death is cited as being shot in the abdomen by a gun with defective blank ammunition at the Wilmington movie studios on the set of “The Crow” in March of 1993.
Brandon Lee landed what was to be his breakthrough acting role in “The Crow” as the lead character, Eric Draven, a murdered musician who was resurrected by a crow, and went on to avenge the deaths of himself and his fiancee.
Brandon Lee had finished most of his scenes before his death, so the film was finished through script re-writes, a stunt-double, and digital effects, and the film was dedicated to Brandon Lee…and his fiance, Eliza Hutton.
Sounds incredibly similar to the death of the Australian actor Heath Ledger in 2008, who was said to have received inspiration for the make-up for his role as the Joker in “The Dark Knight” from Brandon Lee in “The Crow…”
…and who, at the age of 28, also died before the filming of the movie was complete, in his case from “acute-combined drug-intoxication” after he had finished filming his role a few months prior…
…and while he was in the middle of filming his last role in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.”
Back to 1993.
In April & May of 1993, the Four-Corners area of the American Southwest was hit with an outbreak with the newly-recognized pulmonary Hantavirus syndrome.
This region is largely-occupied by the tribal lands including the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, and Zuni.
This was the first-known outbreak of Hantavirus in the United States, and said to be carried by deer-mice, and was said to have been spread through contact with “aerosolized” deer-mice droppings…
… in enclosed spaces in and around those who contracted the Hantavirus.
The Great Flood of 1993 occurred in the United States between April and October, when the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers flooded large parts of the American Midwest.
One of the most costly and devastating floods ever to occur in the United States, the cost in damages was said to be $15-billion, and the flooded area totalled around 30,000-square-miles, or 78,000-kilometers-squared.
Repetitive and persistent storms bombarded the Upper Midwest with considerable rainfall, with many areas across the north-central plains having rainfall 400 to 750% above-normal.
The Srebrenica Massacre took place in Bosnia on April 12th, at which time the Bosnian Serb Army launched an artillery attack on Srebrenica, and Bosnian Muslim enclave that believed it was under UN protection, and had numerous Bosnian muslim refugees from surrounding settlements coming there.
The artillery attack left 56 dead and 73 seriously wounded, including 14 children who were killed when an artillery shell hit a school playgorund.
Even though the UN declared Srebrenica, and several other Bosnian cities, as Safe Areas on April 16th, it was considered to be one of the most controversial decisions of the UN, and the resolutions were unclear about how these areas were to be protected in a war zone.
It led to a diplomatic crisis, and another massacre took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995, one of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, when more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed by the Bosnian Serb Army.
On April 24th of 1993, the IRA detonated a powerful truck-bomb, loaded with fertilizer, on Bishopsgate, a major thoroughfare in the City of London, London’s financial district.
This is a view of the nearby Wormwood Street after the bomb detonated, for which there was a telephoned warning about an hour beforehand.
It took place on a Saturday, resulting in one-death, 44 injuries, and severely damaged St. Ethelburga’s, the smallest and one of the oldest churches in London…
…which has since been restored…
…and wrecked the Liverpool Street Station…
…and the NatWest Tower.
As a result of the bombing, combined with the bombing of the Baltic Exchange in the City of London the year prior, a “ring of steel” was implemented to protect the city.
Most of the Zambian National Football team died in a plane-crash in Gabon on April 27th, enroute to Dakar, Senegal, for the FIFA World Cup Qualifier against Senegal.
They were in a transport carrier of the Zambian Air Force, and the official investigation concluded that the pilot had shut down the wrong engine after an engine fire, causing the plane to lose all power when leaving the airport in Libreville, Gabon, and the plane crashed in the ocean.
On May 4th, The United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNISOM) II assumed Somalian duties after the dissolution of the US-led United Task Force (UNITAF).
UNISOM II was tasked with establishing a secure enough environment to carry out humanitarian operations by any means necessary.
The Nambjiya Mine disaster in Zamora, Ecuador took place on May 9th.
It involved a landslide that took place in a remote mining settlement in southeastern Ecuador, near Peru.
The Nambjiya Mining settlement, known as the “World’s Most Dangerous Gold Town,” is situated in a valley 2,600-meters, or 8,530-feet, above sea-level, with most of the houses built right on the tunnel entrances to the mines.
On this day, a large part of the mountain, above the mines and part of the town, collapsed, with estimates of the death toll ranging between 85 and 400, and is considered to be one of the worst mining disasters ever, even though mining was said to have continued in the settlement in the unaffected areas after the landslide.
The location of the landslide itself is an official graveyard.
The next day, on May 10th, a fire at the Kader Toy Factory fire took place in Bangkok, Thailand, killing 188 people and injuring 469. It is considered the worst industrial fire in history, with most of the victims being young women from rural Thailand. The toys, stuffed toys and plastic toys intended for export, were manufactured primarily for Disney and Mattel.
The fire exits drawn in the building plans were in fact not constructed, and the existing external doors were locked.
The fire started in the part of the building where fabrics, materials, and plastics were stored, providing fuel for the fire.
It is interesting to note that when I was investigating fire disasters back in the 1980s, locked doors were a common occurrence, with examples like the Cinema Statuto Fire in February of 1983, in Turin, Italy, that killed 64 people, and was the largest disaster in Turin since World War II, with the fire was said to have started from flames spread by an old curtain, and that the burning of the theater seats created hydrogen cyanide fumes, of which inhalation was the primary cause of death of the victims.
All but one of the theater’s emergency exits was said to have been closed and locked…
…and the Alcala 20 Nightclub in Madrid, Spain, in December of 1983, in which 82 people were killed and 27 injured, where an exit on the upper floor was locked, and a main exit to an adjoined building was closed with an iron-grille during the fire.
On May 17th, the new Pentium Processor was unveiled, the newest and fastest microprocessor created by the Intel Corporation.
There was a plane crash in Colombia, on May 19th, that killed all 132 people on-board after the aircraft collided with a mountain on approach to Medellin.
The crash was attributed to bad weather and pilot error.
Typhoon Koryn caused massive damage to the Philippines, China, and Macau between June 26th and June 28th.
It was the first typhoon, and it was a super typhoon, of the 1993 Pacific Typhoon season, which had no official bounds.
In a normal year, tropical cyclones, which can turn into typhoons, form between May and November.
In 1993, the season started in February and the last storm dissipated on January 1st of 1994.
Forty tropical cyclones formed in 1993, with 30 becoming tropical storms, 15 becoming typhoons, and 3 becoming, like Koryn, becoming super typhoon.
A typhoon, which is a tropical cyclone that forms in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, is classified as a super typhoon when it has wind-speeds of at least 120-mph, or 190-km/h.
President Bill Clinton authorized a cruise missile attack on Iraqi intelligence HQ in Baghdad on June 27th after an attempted assassination of George H. W. Bush in Kuwait in April.
On the night of April 13th that same year, when George H. W. Bush was scheduled to visit Kuwait City the next day to commemorate the International Coalition Victory against Iraq, Kuwaiti officials arrested 17 people in connection with a plot to kill Bush using plastic explosives hidden in a vehicle.
The authorized attacked was comprised of the launch of 23 cruise missiles by two U. S. Navy warships into downtown Baghdad, was claimed by the U. S. to hit the Iraqi intelligence Headquarters, and the Iraqis claimed that nine civilians were killed in the attack and 3 civilian houses destroyed.
Hurricane Calvin landed in Mexico on July 7th, which was 2nd hurricane on record to make landfall in Mexico. It was said to kill an estimated 30 to 40 people.
Throughout its journey along the Pacific coast of Mexico, it dropped heavy rainfall, and causing property damage, mudslides and flooding.
A magnitude 7.7 EQ hit southwest of Hokkaido on July 12th, and generated a tsunami.
The hardest hit location by these events in northern Japan was Hokkaido’s island of Okushiri, where 165 people were killed as a result of the earthquake, with the tsunami, and large landslide.
On July 26th, Asiana Airlines Flight 733 crashed into Mt. Ungeo in Haenam, South Korea, killing 68, with two survivors.
The cause was attributed to pilot error after two previously failed landing attempts because of bad weather.
The Royal Plaza Hotel at Nakha Ratchasima in Thailand collapsed on August 13th, killing 137 and injuring 227.
The collapse of the building took less than 10-seconds, which was attributed to gradual deformation from creep that weakened all the ground floor support columns.
The only part of the building left standing was the front elevator hall, which was said to have been separately built from the rest of the structure.
It was one of the most fatal and disastrous man-made accidents in Thai history, which took place only three-months after the world’s worst accidental loss-of-life fire in an industrial Building at the Kader Toy Factory in Bangkok, Thailand.
Hurricane Gert started out as large tropical cyclone that formed from a tropical wave in the Caribbean Sea, and became the 7th-named storm, and third hurricane, of the Atlantic Hurricane season.
It caused extensive flooding and mudslides throughout Central America and Mexico between September 15th and September 21st.
Hurricane Gert left behind disrupted road networks for extended periods of time, which hampered rescue missions and relief efforts in badly-flooded regions.
Damage costs amounted to $170-million, leaving private property, infrastructure, and farmland in ruins.
On September 22nd, the Big Bayou Canot Rail Disaster took place, near Mobile, Alabama, killing 47 people and injuring 103.
It involved the derailing of an Amtrak train on the CSX Transportation Big Bayou Canot Bridge after a towboat pulling heavy barges collided with the rail bridge eight-minutes earlier, causing a displacement of the span of the bridge and deformation of the rails.
It was the deadliest rail accident in Amtrak’s history, and the worst rail accident in the United States since the 1958 Newark Bay Rail accident, where 48 people were killed.
The pilot of the tugboat pulling the barges was said to have made a wrong turn in foggy conditions on the Mobile River, and entered the Big Bayou Canot; was not properly trained on how to read radar; and mistook the bridge on the radar for another tugboat.
After the accident, the pilot was not found to be criminally-liable for it.
On September 24th, the Cambodian monarchy was restored with Norodom Sihanouk as its king.
It is interesting to note that during his lifetime, Cambodia was variously called: the French Protectorate of Cambodia, until 1953; the Kingdom of Cambodia, from 1953 to 1970; the Khmer Republic from 1970 to 1975; the People’s Republic of Kampuchea from 1979 to 1989; the State of Cambodia from 1989 to 1993; and again the Kingdom of Cambodia, from 1993 to the present.
King Sihanouk abdicated in 2004, and the Royal Council of the Throne chose his oldest son, Norodom Sihamoni, as his successor, who is still the King of Cambodia.
King Sihamoni lived outside of Cambodia most of his life, having been educated in Czechoslovakia.
He is not married, and has no children.
Back to 1993.
A 6.2-magnitude, relatively shallow earthquake, known as the Latur Earthquake, shook Maharashtra, India, on September 30th.
As a result of the earthquake, approximately 10,000 people died; over 30,000 were injured; and around 50 villages were destroyed.
The Battle of Mogadishu, part of the broader Somali Civil War, took place between October 3rd and 4th in what was known as “Operation Gothic Serpent.”
It was also known as the “Black Hawk Down” incident.
The battle was a disaster for coalition troops and resulted in a major strategic victory for Somali National Alliance forces under the leadership of Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
The Battle of Mogadishu remains one of the most heavily devastating battles American troops ever experienced in close combat.
On October 10th, less than 3-months after the July 26th crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 733 into Mt. Ungeo in Haenam, South Korea, the South Korean Ferry Soehae capsized in the Yellow Sea, off Wido, South Korea, killing 292 of the 362 on-board, with 70 rescues.
Factors attributed to the capsizing of the ferry included: overcrowding, with 141 more passengers than safely allowed; harsh weather conditions; and a thick rope that was found wrapped around both propellor shafts, which was said to have been left behind by fishing operations.
On October 21st, a coup in Burundi resulted in the assassination of the new-elected President Melchior Ndadaye, who won the country’s presidency in a landmark, multi-party election in July of this same year.
His assassination sparked the Burundian Civil War, which we are told was the result of longstanding divisions, like in Rwanda, between the Hutus and Tutsis.
An estimated 300,000 died as a result of the Burundian Civil War, with children being used on both sides.
The German, then Belgian, colonial rulers of the region of Ruanda-Urundi, found it convenient to rule through the existing power structure, in which the Tutsis were the aristocrats & rulers.
The colonial powers fostered ethnic differences between the minority artistocratic Tutsis and majority Hutus, and Ruanda-Urundi became two countries upon independence in 1962.
Believed to be Nilotic origin, meaning indigenous to the Nile River Valley, the Tutsi people are historically a very tall people.
The Burundian Civil war lasted from October 21st of 1993 until May 15th of 2005, and the Rwandan Civil War started on October 1st of 1990, and ended on July 18th of 1994, with the end of the Rwandan genocide. More on Rwandan Genocide coming up in a close look at 1994.
The Maastricht Treaty took effect on November 1st, formally establishing the European Union.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) passed the legislative houses of United States, Canada, and Mexico between November 17th and November 22nd.
NAFTA created a trilateral trade bloc in North America, with the elimination or reduction of barriers to trade and investment between the three countries.
On November 20th, an international passenger flight travelling from Geneva, Switzerland to Skopje, Macedonia, crashed into Mount Trojani near Ohrid Macedonia, killing all 116 on-board, and was the deadliest plane crash in Macedonian history, taking place only a little-over eight-months since the prior deadliest place crash in Macedonian history on March 5th, 1993, as mentioned previously.
The cause of the accident was attributed to pilot error.
President Clinton signed NAFTA into law on December 8th.
On December 10th, id Software’s Doom was released, becoming a landmark title in first-person shooter video games for MS-DOS.
Players assumed the role of a space marine, named Doomguy, fighting his way through hordes of invading demons from hell.
Hmmmm.
Makes me wonder what they were trying to tell us here. Boy, if we knew then what we know now, as I really think hordes of demons is what we have all been dealing with here, without knowing it!
The next day, one-block, of three-blocks, of the Highland Towers near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, collapsed on December 11th.
The collapse buried the building’s occupants under tons of debris, with a total of 48 bodies found and two survivors.
The cause of the collapse was attributed to a major landslide caused by heavy rains that burst diversion pipes.
So far in 1993, as in the last parts of this series focusing on the 1980s and 1990s, we are seeing the same pattern of violent weather around the world…
…weather anomalies like the Great Blizzard on the East Coast and Great Flood of 1993 in the Midwest…
…earthquakes in different parts of the world…
…worst disasters ever of their kind happening one day after the other in different parts of the world…
…plane and train crashes…
…sinking ships…
…buildings just collapsing…
…civil wars…
…terrorism, and much more along these lines going on 1993.
So, what happened in 1994?
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was established, on January 1st, exactly one-year to the day after the European Economic Community eliminated trade barriers and created a European Single Market as previously mentioned.
On January 14th, President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin signed the Kremlin Accords, which ended the pre-programmed aiming of nuclear missiles towards each country’s targets, and provided for the taking apart of the nuclear arsenal in the Ukraine.
The 6.7 magnitude Northridge Earthquake took place on the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday in Los Angeles on Monday, January 17th, leaving 57 dead, and 8,700 injured.
It was the highest-ever, instrumentality recorded earthquake in an urban area in North America.
The 1994 North American cold wave took place during January of 1994, with extreme cold events taking place between January 18th and 19th, and again between January 21st and 22nd, and 67 cold temperature records set on January 19th, with Indiana and Kentucky setting state records on that same day.
The cold wave caused an estimated 100 deaths.
On February 6th, the Markale Massacres took place in a marketplace in Sarajevo.
On this day, a 120-milimeter mortar shell hit the middle of a crowded marketplace during the Bosnian War, which was part of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, between Bosnian Serbs and forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
As a result of this incident there were 68 dead and 144 injured, and it was never conclusively determined which side had fired the shell. The UN ultimately concluded that it was impossible to determine which side had fired the shell.
Baruch Goldstein, a physician who followed the far-right, ultranationalist Meir Kahane, opened fire inside the Cave of the Patriarchs, also known as the Ibrihami Mosque, in Hebron in the West Bank on February 25th, and killed 29 muslims, and injured 125 before he was beaten to death.
As a direct result of the massacre, Jewish Israelis were barred from going into major Arab communities in Hebron…and the Israel government also expelled Arabs from certain streets near Jewish settlements in Hebron, where many had homes and businesses.
On March 14th, Apple released Power Macintosh, ten-years after the release of the first Macintosh computer.
It was the first Macintosh to use the new PowerPC Microprocessors, a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), created by the 1991 Apple – IBM – Motorola Alliance.
On the same day of March 14th, the Linux Kernel version 1.0.0 was released after two-years of development by Finnish software engineer Linus Torvalds.
A kernel is a computer program that has complete control over everything in the system, and is in the core of the operating system.
The Linux Kernel software is a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) that anyone is freely-licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way.
It is deployed on a wide-variety of computing systems, such as embedded devices, mobile devices, personal computers, servers, mainframes, and supercomputers.
Hmmm. Does this mean that something or someone has control over my computer devices at all times?
Is this what updates my computer and cell phone whether I asked for it or not?
US troops were withdrawn from Somalia on March 15th.
As part of Operation Restore Hope, they had arrived in Somalia on December 9th of 1992, and greeted by the glare of television lights, which I remember watching on TV when it happened with my husband, and we were both thinking how crazy it was that a military landing was being televised.
By the time U. S. troops were withdrawn in March of 1994, they left behind a country plagued by bandits and looters, with many Somalis needing to scavenge for survival.
The Green Ramp Disaster occurred on March 23rd, when two military aircraft collided in mid-air over Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina.
The Green Ramp was a grassy area at the end of the one of the east-west runway at the Air Force Base that was used by the Army to stage joint-operations with the Air Force.
A little after 2 pm on that fateful day, a fighter-jet conducting a simulated “flame-out,” which is the run-down of a jet engine due to the extinction of the flame in the combustion chamber, collided with a C-130 transport plane.
At an altitude of 300-feet, or 90-meters, above-ground, the nose of the fighter jet severed the right elevator of the C-130, which is what controls the aircraft’s pitch, or angle, of the wing.
The C-130 managed to land safely, but pilots of the fighter jet ended-up having to eject, and the fighter jet ended up hurtling towards the Green Ramp.
Long-story short, the burning wreckage of the fighter jet ended up directly in the area where the mass of Army paratroopers were situated.
It killed 24-members of the U. S. Army’s 82nd-Airborne Division and injured around 100.
The causes of the fatal accident were attributed to both Air Traffic Control and pilot error.
The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak occurred on March 27th, the biggest of 1994, in the southeastern United States.
It was the third notable tornado outbreak to occur on a Palm Sunday, with the first two occurring in 1920 and in 1965.
The weather system caused 29 tornadoes, killing 40 people, injuring 491, and causing $140-million in damages.
The deadliest storm of the outbreak produced an F4 tornado that devastated Piedmont, Alabama, striking three churches in mid-Palm Sunday service.
There were 20 people killed at one of the churches, Goshen United Methodist Church in Cherokee County, including the 4-year-old daughter of the pastor.
