This day in history - April 12

[seamusTX]

1844 - Texas became a U.S. territory.

1861 - The War Between the States began with the Confederate assault on Fort Sumter.

1945 - Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt died at the age of 63.

1955 - The Salk vaccine against polio was approved for general use -- intentionally on the tenth anniversary of FDR's death.

Those who were born later are largely unaware of the pervasive fear of polio in that era. The U.S. had 20,000 to 50,000 new cases a year. Many of the victims died, were confined to iron lungs, or were paralyzed for life.

By the year 1994, polio was declared eradicated in the U.S. It is found today only in third-world cesspools.

1961 - Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly in space.

1981- The space shuttle Columbia was launched from Cape Canaveral on its first test flight. Coincidence? You decide.

1983 - Harold Washington was elected mayor of Chicago. He presided over the most turbulent four years in Chicago politics in living memory.

Many thought that his election would plant a stake in the heart of the political machine that Mayor Richard J. Daley had built. They were wrong.

- Jim

[seamusTX]

150 years since 1861.

50 years since 1961.

- Jim

[seamusTX]

Wake up, people. The latest tweet is not everything. Reality has a way of slapping you hard upside the head.

- Jim

[JALLEN]

It is hard to imagine now the fear polio excited in people back then. I was just describing this to my sons earlier this week, coincidentally. A girl in my class had polio and was in leg braces and bulky heavy arm braces. The youth choir used to go around singing Christmas carols to shut ins some of whom were in iron lungs...... dreadful!

The vaccines changed life in the US in ways that are imponderable now.

[puma guy]

It is hard to imagine now the fear polio excited in people back then. I was just describing this to my sons earlier this week, coincidentally. A girl in my class had polio and was in leg braces and bulky heavy arm braces. The youth choir used to go around singing Christmas carols to shut ins some of whom were in iron lungs...... dreadful!

The vaccines changed life in the US in ways that are imponderable now.

A friend of our family had a daughter who contracted polio. I collected almost $50 for the March of Dimes and made my Dad drive into Houston to turn it in to the drive center. I think I thought maybe if I helped out I wouldn't catch polio. I remember all the wives tales of how you caught it and until we got the vaccine I constantly worried about getting polio.

[Vol Texan]

1861 - The War Between the States began with the Confederate assault on Fort Sumter.

I prefer to refer to it as 'The War of Northern Aggression'

[longtooth]

I have a GOOD friend. Joe Havard. He is a wheel chair victim of Polio.
I remember it too. That is bad stuff.

We seem to have never yet been able to break the chains of that Northern Agression.
Nullification would go a long way though.
We have a rule here so I wont say what I think is better than nulification.
LT

[seamusTX]

It is hard to imagine now the fear polio excited in people back then.... The vaccines changed life in the US in ways that are imponderable now.

It wasn't just polio. U.S. cities had epidemics of cholera, diphtheria, and typhoid fever. Malaria was common in the U.S. Women died in childbirth. Practically any infection was a death sentence.

From 1900 to 1960 life expectancy went from something like 40 to 75.

This improvement was due to public health measures, engineering in the form of sanitary sewers and water supplies, vaccines, antibiotics, and pesticides (including the now-derided DDT).

- Jim