Showing posts with label U. S. Navy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U. S. Navy. Show all posts

April 27 - Matanzas Mule Day

Posted on April 27, 2020


Today is not about celebrating the species called Matanzas mules, because there is no species called "Matanzas mules"!

Mules, of course, are the sterile offspring of horses and donkeys. There happened to be at least one mule in the little town of Matanzas, Cuba, on this date in 1898.

But this was the onset of the Spanish-American War. And just off the coast of Matanzas were ships from the United States Navy. They bombarded the town. 



Now, when you hear the word "bombard," you imagine hundreds of shells being lobbed at buildings, piers, and walls, and you assume the tragic loss of many lives. I am happy to report that that didn't happen.

According to the story, no humans died from the U.S. bombardment - the only Cuban that lost its life that day was a single mule.

The story continues that the mule was buried with full military honors, a band playing a dirge, hundreds of mourners - possibly to humiliate the U.S. Navy.

Or...did this happen at all? If the story of a single casualty from a naval action being a mule, and that mule being buried with military pomp, would be humiliating, maybe the humiliating story was just made up?

A story in the New York Times on August 5, 1898, reprinted from The London Globe, tells about the funeral of the Matanzas mule, and someone named Chief Officer Smalls claims to have attended said funeral. There is a long time between April 27 and August 5 - plenty of time, back then, for news to travel, but also plenty of time to rumors to spread and for people to misremember stuff. 

Anyway, whether or not it happened, the Matanzas Mule is now enshrined in poems and songs, including lines in which mourners looked with pity on the poor "bombarded mule."







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December 9 – Happy Birthday, Grace Hopper

Posted on December 9, 2015


She was called by some “Amazing Grace.”

And that's because she was so gosh-darned accomplished!

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (born on this date in 1906, in New York City) was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark 1 computer, invented the first compiler for a computer programming language, and helped develop the idea of programming languages independent of particular machines – which led to the development of COBOL.

Which in turn led to another of her nicknames: Grandma COBOL.

This is the semi-famous moth found
inside a computer.
Hopper is even credited with popularizing the word “debugging” for fixing computer programming glitches. The word “bugs” had been used for a long time – even by Thomas Edison! – for the various causes of technical difficulties, and the word “debugging” had been used for removing causes of technical difficulties in aeronautics. But when working on early computers at Harvard, some of Hopper's associates discovered a moth that had stuck in the relays and was causing a problem, so she quipped that they were debugging the computer. Since the word was already used in similar fields, it grabbed hold right away.

But Grace Hopper wasn't just a computer scientist and pioneer. She was also a United States Navy Rear Admiral.

She volunteered for the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during World War II, and she graduated from the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School first in her class. She worked for the military as a computer programmer, starting as a lieutenant, junior grade. She turned down a full professorship at Vassar (a highly respected university) in order to continue with the Navy (really, the Naval Reserve), and by the time she retired at age 60, she had reached the rank of Commander. 

She was recalled to active duty in 1967. Then she was recalled again in 1972. Somewhere in there she was promoted to Captain. Finally, in 1983, Hopper was promoted to Commodore, a rank that was renamed Rear Admiral.

When she finally really retire, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy, and she was aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy.

So...amazing!


Applause, applause...

Hopper had a long life and a very, very long career. She won many awards, and everything from Navy ships and computers to parks, schools, and buildings have been named after her. Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities worldwide, and a whole lot of awards and scholarships and even a professorship are named in Grace Hopper's honor.

Words of wisdom...

I've included a couple of cool quotes from Hopper on this page, but here is one more:

The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, "Try it." And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances.


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October 13 – The U.S. Navy's Birthday

Posted on October 13, 2015

It's a bit tough to say when some beginnings are...

For example, can you have a United States Navy before you have a United States?

Apparently, you can! The official birthday of the U.S. Navy is October 13, 1775 – even though the Declaration of Independence wasn't until July, 1776, and the nation didn't win its Revolutionary War against Britain until its victory in Yorktown in October, 1781. Even then, the war didn't officially end – and the United States become recognized as a sovereign nation – until September, 1783.

It was the Continental Congress of the 13 colonies that first established a small navy on this date in 1775. This Continental navy wasn't created to fight the British navy for control of the Atlantic Ocean! After all, the Royal Navy was the most powerful navy in the world.

However, the Continental navy was designed to work with “privateers” – which are armed ships owned by individual people, not by the government, that are authorized for use in war – to attack and raid British supply ships. It was a smart tactic – the Continental navy and privateers would wait and watch for a transport on its way to resupply British forces, and then they would dart in and attack. Whenever they saw Royal Navy men-of-war – the battle ships – they would wriggle away and avoid fights if possible.

The start-up Continental navy was made up of rather small ships that they had purchased, converted, or built. Here are the major types of ships used by that first navy:

frigates:

brigs:

sloops:

schooners:


Honestly, I'm not sure of the difference between the various ships – number of masts, number of sails, speed and agility all probably factor in, somehow – but if you're interested, you could look up the definition of each of the ships.

Nowadays, of course, the U.S. Navy has a lot of much larger, more powerful ships. Some of the ships are more like small cities than like, say, a sloop or a frigate! Again, I'm not positive of the exact difference between, say, cruisers and destroyers, but you could find out what defines each of these kinds of ships.

Here are some of the most important types of modern naval ships:

aircraft carriers:
 submarines:

amphibious assault ships:

amphibious transport docks:

dock landing ships:

cruisers:

destroyers:
frigates:

littoral combat ships:

patrol ships:

mine countermeasures ships:


P.S. Guess who has the world's most powerful navy now?

If you answered “the U.S. of A.,” you're right!




Also on this date:

















Astronomy Day




























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