On this day .....

Life Flight is born -- Today in 1976, Hermann Hospital’s emergency service Life Flight, a small helicopter equipped to hold a patient, a pilot, a flight nurse, and a surgical resident, debuted under the leadership of Dr. Red Duke. Duke served two tours in Vietnam then went to UT Med School.

 

Amazing how the 75th anniversary of this event went so completely unnoticed.

 

Roughly 36 years to the day (1983) -- the first cellphone went on sale.
The asking price for the Motorola DynaTAC (aka “The Brick”) was $3,995 (calculated at over $10,000 in today’s dollars).
Weighed ~2 pounds
Charging took ~10 hours
Battery life ~20 minutes (then completely dead)



Here is a clip of some demo work done in 1973



And here is the first commercial network wireless call, made from a car at Soldier Field Chicago

 

Couple more related pics to the cell phone story^

1959



Making international call in the 1950s. "Operators" at Tokyo’s international telephone exchange "connected" ~140 calls per day.



This is an “attaché phone” in July 1969. Made by Marlin American, it combined an FM transmitter and receiver, decoder, antenna and battery in a briefcase. Retailed for $2,495.



Rotary dial Pay phones -- 1974

 

Use of a cordless phone at lunch in the Waldorf in Feb 1983.



1990

 

Last one -> Jan 1927 -- Here is Walter S. Gifford, president of AT&T placing the first trans-Atlantic phone call, from his office in NY to the London office of the secretary of the British General Post Office. The cost was ~$1,500 per hour, or ~$25 a minute.

 

August 6, 1945

The Big Bang #1. Hiroshima gone!

 

^An important milestone in modern history. Nagasaki on the 9th. Japanese surrendered. If they had not surrendered, no telling how many lives would have been lost in an invasion of Japan.

 

Whacked me pretty good, but not as bad as many others

 

Eleven years ago - a week that changed the world

 

9-11-2001... 18 years ago today.

I'll always remember exactly where I was, what I was doing and what went on that entire day for me, friends, family, co-workers. Stood in line for a couple of hours to give blood with hundreds of others but eventually was turned away as the donation center was swamped.... a sad, sad day.

 

The far-left New York Times reports it was “airplanes” that took aim at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 — not Islamic terrorists.

 

Texas grads whose lives were cut short that day:

Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, BS ’86

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Flight 93

Richard Aronow, JD ’78

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66th floor North Tower

Peter Moutos, BBA ’83

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100th floor South Tower

 

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PC / sanitation ******** at it's finest.

 

2,977 people were murdered that day and they quote it as over 2000 instead of almost 3,000. Give it another 18 years and they'll report it as a few hundred people were injured in an unfortunate accident.

 

The conspiracy theories crop back up too.
People are again questioning if a plane really flew into the Pentagon.
Ok say it didn't. Where did the flight go then?

There is though a CNN you tube vid of a reporter immediately on the scene who said he got up very close to the hole and he saw no evidence of a plane . That is strange
But not as strange as how you would get rid of a 757 with no witnesses.

Here is what a conspiracy nut sent. the CNN report
cnn you tube aired once never aired again - Bing video


This is a really amazing vid of Donald Trump calling into WWOR on 9/11/2001
He said one thing we need to do is Never Forget. It is worth a listen

 

9/11/2001 is one of those rare days that most folks, me included, can remember clearly what they we wearing, what they were doing, where they were. I was just leaving a auto dealership having picked up my car after routine maintenance. As I opened the door an employee mentioned that the radio just said a plane had crashed into one of the WTC buildings in NYC. I listened as I drove to the Deloitte offices in downtown Dallas, and just as I was pulling into the parking garage, the news crew announced a second plane had struck another WTC building. Eventually, we were all evacuated from the building. Deloitte had an office in the WTC area, not in the two tall building, but across the street. Arriving home, I watched as both towers eventually fell.

Emails came in form Deloitte NYC. The office's managing partner wrote the offices near the WTC had extensive damage and an emergency-temporary site was set up in another building. However, 252 employees were unaccounted for. As I recall, the building our NYC offices were located in collapsed later that afternoon, but had been evacuated earlier. I checked emails the remainder of the day and the number of missing personnel began to fall as employees called in. The next day, only 1 was missing and he had checked out to go to a meeting with a client located on the floors directly in the path of the second plane. Aslo having previously worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers, several partners (2 or 3 in NYC) were killed in the towers and and 1 on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. One of the dead I had met and spoke with on the phone a few times, so it was, in a way, more personal.

My now ex-wife and I watched the news and saw the replays of the towers collapsing and some people jumping. She didn't want to watch the horror, but I told her she should watch it and let in burn in to her mind as an indelible picture of what terrorism looks like, never forget it, and know retribution would be taken as swiftly as possible. I knew the hunt would be on for those committing the atrocities on the defenseless people killed, and eventually the perpetrators would be caught a punished. Eventually they were. I fast forward to the night that President Obama had a late evening announcement that Osama Bin Laden had be found and killed, and his body taken away by our guys to be eventually buried at sea. His cohorts involved in the planning were also properly disposed of as well.

I do not dwell on the tragedy, but I do take this day to remember what occurred, reflect on the lives lost, and take solace, that justice was meted out and the major perpetrators vanquished.

 

OTD in 1683, the Ottoman Turks' months long siege of Vienna is lifted by Austrian resistance and the ferocious charge of the Polish Hussars (John III Sobieski), German cavalry and Dnieper Cossacks. From here, the Ottomans were pursued out of Europe. IMO, this battle was akin to the battle of Thermopylae in terms of saving Western Civilization.

 

4yrs ago today Greg Fenves Fired Steve Patterson

 

49 years ago today, the great Jimi Hendrix passed away from barbiturate-related asphyxia. He was 27

 

I have always hated the LAD but nonetheless admit this was a pretty great moment

 

October 15, 1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on island of St Helena to begin his exile.

 

Too soon?