New answers tagged united-states
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I'll make two preliminary points before addressing the question directly. First, there isn't anything terribly unique about Irish-Americans as compared to white ethnics in general, and so my answer will be on that level applicable to Jews, Italians, etc. Second, I think it is easy to answer this question if we approach economic class and social status (of ...
1
I will argue that 'poverty' in modern societies is more of a social construct rather than an objective reality. Roughly speaking, people at the 'bottom' of society will feel poor, even if they have more disposable income than an average person in another country.
There is an objective 'extreme poverty' end of it, on the level of 'who of my children will eat ...
8
It is very difficult or impossible to compare. By some standards almost all
Soviet citizens were poor. By other standards they were OK.
There is no adequate conversion rate of the Soviet rouble. Prices in roubles were not true market prices: most of them were arbitrarily established by the state. Many things were cheap but not easily available. Let me ...
-2
You could always find statistics where USSR looked better
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. If you want to find the "proof" that life in USSR was better than in US (at least for the poor), there are metrics that could help you.
Unemployment in USSR was very low, officially 1-2%, far lower then US unemployment which ...
5
Question:
Can we compare meaningfully the poverty levels in the former USSR to those in the USA at the same time and to those in the USA today?
Short Answer:
The Soviet Union did not permit outside or objective reporting of embarrassing facts throughout its history. It mostly denied the existence of poverty in their system entirely, claiming poverty was a ...
-3
The only explanation I can guess is that the USA saw Pakistan's attack on India in 1965 as a possible shift of balance of power in favor of communist China.
Pakistan was a member of US-led anti-communist pole (SEATO, CENTO, etc) from its inception. But, due to the hostility of China with India, Pakistan started to warm relations with China ("An enemy of ...
4
The answer is in the Wikipedia article on the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965:
"Following the start of the 1965 war, both the United States and Britain took the view that the conflict was largely Pakistan's fault, and suspended all arms shipments to both India and Pakistan."
The source cited by Wikipedia for that statement is Pakistan : a country ...
0
Question #1:
Did Northern troops attempt to re-enslave African Americans in Southern plantations during the Civil War?
Short Answer #1:
Not Just Northern Troops. It was the North's policy for the first year of the war, to be followed by all of it's generals. Generals who did not follow this policy (like John Fremont) and freed slaves risked losing their ...
0
From McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, p.711:
The need of northern and British textile mills for cotton also caused
the army to put many freed people to work growing cotton—often on the
same plantations where they had done the same work as slaves. Some of
these plantations remained in government hands and were administered
by "labor superintendents&...
3
Note I'm not intending this to be the answer, but rather a summary of my research that will hopefully help you along.
My line of thinking towards a possible solution went along these lines:
Trends that have existed in published works;
Origin of the abbreviation "St.";
Possible influences on this (though it may be quite difficult to choose a ...
38
This is referring to the area around New Orleans, ca. 1863-5. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't apply to lower Louisiana, which was already under Union occupation. It only applied to areas that were in a state of insurrection on January 1, 1863. Slaves in lower Louisiana remained enslaved until the passage of the 13th amendment on December 6, 1865.
So ...
5
It seems that a number of later historians have questioned that interpretation.
In 1982 Eric Foner published an article called "Reconstruction Revisted" where he reviews relevant new developments in the historiography of the 1960s and 1970s. He writes:
Challenging the contention that the Civil War signaled the eclipse of the old planter class and ...
2
There's an important social aspect to this that hasn't been addressed so far. Until August 1949, when the USSR performed its first nuclear test, the atom bomb was the source and symbol of the USA's status as the sole superpower. After that, the improvement of atom bombs and development of hydrogen bombs was an important part of American actions to maintain ...
2
Question:
Why did Robert F. Kennedy loathe Lyndon B. Johnson?
Short Answer:
The Kennedy's were entitled, born into a family which had groomed them to be President. They were extremely well educated having attended the best universities. They were accustomed to power having circulated with the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country from an ...
4
Perhaps you are not familiar with the US West? Even today (and more so in the 1940s & 50s) there are places where you can be miles and miles (substitute km if desired) away from anything much other than sagebrush and rattlesnakes. The tests were conducted in such locations. (Note that Las Vegas wasn't much of a place in those days, either.)
OTOH, ...
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For another account on the (this time informed) contemporary attitude, read Richard Feynman's book Los Alamos from Below published here in full or quoted here.
The gist is, he figured that at 20 miles distance he would be safe behind a car's windshield and would see more without dark glasses.
... But just a few minutes before it was supposed to go off the ...
4
I just wanted to add this link to what has been said. Yes, the mindset was that radiation from the bombs was not as dangerous. If you want proof of there, here is a youtube video of five army guys STANDING AT GROUND ZERO during an air burst. (The missile explodes several miles directly above them)
In fact, the army did drills where troops would hunker down ...
38
In regards the secondary question, namely
Am I missing something here?
Yes; absolutely. You have neglected both the shielding effect of the 65 miles of air between Las Vegas and the bomb explosions, and the fact that the actual radiation intensity falls off as the square of the distance.
The study The Children of Atomic Bomb Survivors: A Genetic Study. by ...
59
Yes. There are many articles supporting this claim. Here's one from Bloomberg:
For four decades, the U.S. Department of Energy tested more than a thousand nuclear devices at the Nevada Test Site, a desert expanse just 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The 1951 detonation of a warhead 1,060 feet over the desert floor marked the beginning of the above-ground ...
2
There were a host - literally - of newspapers published in Oregon starting in 1846, some even continuing to the current day. The East Oregonian is an example of one still publishing that began publishing on Thursday March 1, 1888, apparently on broadsheet.
By contrast The Stayton Sun was a considerably more modest effort, publishing exactly one issue on ...
4
According to the U.S. Dept. of State, various bodies within the U.S. government performed the following steps on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT):
Signed at Washington, London, and Moscow July 1, 1968
Ratification advised by U.S. Senate March 13, 1969
Ratified by U.S. President November 24, 1969
U.S. ratification deposited at ...
6
For the purposes of this question, I will interpret "as artillery" to mean "indirect-fire". That is, they're firing at a location, not a target.
Yes.
M4 hulls were used to make self-propelled artillery: M7 Priest, M12, and Sexton. They even played around with putting a whole bunch of rockets on an M4, but not in large numbers. And many M4 tanks were ...
5
I think that this is quite a pertinent and interesting question. Depending on one's location, Americans may seem to have a 'natural' predisposition towards cars and using them. However, this obviously reflects something in how that country developed and what choices it made.
In short, the re-alignment of the post-war economy with the war-time repressed ...
2
Since this touches on something that affects all countries, I'm going to answer it with statistics from another country: Reported Road Casualties UK.
You can see that last year, 1800 people died in traffic accidents in the UK last year. The number has been falling steadily since 1980. Before then in the years provided, the number was never lower than 4000, ...
2
America has historically been a young people oriented society that celebrated a youth culture. This youth culture has taken different turns at various times, depending on its intersection with whatever else was going on in American society at the time.
The book "Generations, by William Strauss and Neil Howe explains that the teenagers of the 1950s and ...
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