19 August 1960-Francis Gary Powers is convicted of espionage sentence to 10 years in prison while the first CORONA film capsule is successfully recovered

First satellite image from CORONA, the world’s first photo-reconnaissance satellite

Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev views wreckage of Powers’ U-2 aircraft

On 4 July, 1956, the first U-2 reconnaissance flight took place over the Soviet Union. The plane, flying at an altitude of nearly 70,000 feet, took high-resolution photographs of Soviet military installations around the city of Leningrad and the Soviet Northern Fleet bases around Severomorsk. For the first time the U.S. had precise insight into the Soviet military threat, but this insight came at a significant risk. Flying reconnaissance aircraft over another country’s airspace was tantamount to an act of war. Flying reconnaissance aircraft over the airspace of the ultra-paranoid Soviet Union was extremely dangerous, but President Eisenhower took the risk to gain insight into the missile and bomber threat posed by the Soviet Union.

Each U-2 flight had to be approved by President Eisenhower, and each time the CIA approached him with a flight request, Eisenhower would make the agency prove why the flight was needed. At the same time the U-2 flights were taking place, the Air Force and CIA were working on the world’s first photo-reconnaissance satellite. The satellite, called CORONA, would take pictures on film capsules, then eject the capsule over the Pacific Ocean, where an Air Force recovery plane would grab it in mid-air. There was some concern that orbiting a satellite over a country’s airspace might be the same as violating a country’s airspace with a U-2, but this concern was put to rest on 4 October, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. Sputnik orbited the Earth by passing over the United States several times a day, giving the U.S. freedom to orbit a satellite over the Soviet Union.

U-2 flights were providing valuable intelligence on the Soviet military posture, but the flights could only cover small sectors of the world’s largest country. There were many bases, particularly ICBM bases, that remained outside the approved flight paths of the planes. The launching of Sputnik in 1957 added greater urgency for more missile base coverage, since placing a satellite in orbit required a missile with a significant amount of thrust, thrust which could in turn be used for more powerful ICBM’s aimed at the U.S. In 1960 President Eisenhower was scheduled to participate in a summit with Khruschchev, President DeGaulle of France, and Prime Minister Macmillan of the UK, with a subsequent trip to Moscow. Before these trips, however, CIA convinced Eisenhower that there was the need for one more U-2 flight. This flight, launched on 1 May, 1960, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, ended disastrously with the plane’s shoot down by a SAM over the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk. Powers was captured alive, imprisoned, and put on trial for espionage.

In one of history’s greatest ironies, on the date that Powers was convicted and sentenced to 10 years for spying for flying his U-2 over Soviet airspace, the first CORONA film capsule was recovered over the Pacific. On the roll of film was the world’s first satellite image from space. The image, of Mys Shmidta Air Field, which is 600 miles from Nome, Alaska, was incredibly crude by today’s standards, but it was one of the most significant intelligence feats in history. A satellite, orbiting without the knowledge of the target country, had provided intelligence on the target country without risking the life of a pilot, or incurring the threat of war. The first CORONA mission also covered far more territory on its one roll of film than all the U-2 flights that had taken place since 1956. A new era had begun. The CORONA satellite imagery also demonstrated that the so called “missile-gap” between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was decidedly to the advantage of the United States. The same was true of the bomber gap, and this intelligence had been gathered risk-free.

15 August 1534-Ignatius Loyola Establishes the Society of Jesus

St. Ignatius of Loyola, as painted

by Rubens

Almost all European/Western Civilization history books cover the formation of the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, as this Roman Catholic priestly order had a profound effect on the spreading of both Catholic Christianity and Western European mores. The order was founded by Ignatius of Loyola on 15 August, 1534. 15 August is also the Feast of the Assumption, which is the day Roman Catholics celebrate as the day the Virgin Mary was bodily assumed into heaven, being spared the mortal pain of death.

Ignatius was born in Spain, and started his adult life as a solider. He participated in many battles, without suffering serious wounds, but on 21 May, 1520, his luck ran out. While fighting French forces in the Battle of Pamplona, a cannonball wounded one leg and severely broke the other. Ignatius required a long convalescence, and the leg had to be broken and re-set at least twice. During this time he read The LIfe of Christ by Ludolph of Saxony. This work, which was written in a style so that the reader experienced the events of the Gospels as though he were actually present at the time, had a profound effect on Loyola’s life. As he continued to heal, he read more religious works, which led a total re-dedication of his life. After his recovery from his wound, he spent several months in a cave near Catalonia, where he practices religious asceticism. When this period of prayer and study were over, he traveled to Palestine for three weeks in 1523, then returned to Spain. From Spain he journeyed to Paris, which at the time was a city in great upheaval due to battles between Catholics and Protestants. Martin Luther’s Reformation had reached France, and the clash of Protestant theology with Loyola’s fervent Catholicism spurred him to attend the University of Paris as a theology student.

While attending university, Loyola become close friends with the following individuals:

Francis Xavier,

Alfonso Salmeron,

Diego Laynez

Nicholas Bobadilla

Peter Faber

Simão Rodrigues

On 15 August, 1534, Loyola and his six companions met in the crypt of the Church of Our Lady of Montmartre, and pledged themselves to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience to the Pope as the newly created Society of Jesus. The primary mission of the order was to serve as the Pope’s missionaries, so the companions traveled to Rome to seek an audience with Pope Paul III. In 1537 Pope Paul III gave his blessing to the order and had the companions ordained as priests.

The Jesuits first set out to create schools and universities in Europe, as Loyola believed that the first step in arresting the Protestant Reformation was in educating the faithful. Loyola believed that one of the causes of the Protestant Reformation was an ill-informed, illiterate Catholic priesthood. Education would be his first bastion in re-claiming the world for the Catholic Church. Since he had started his life as a soldier, Loyola formed the Jesuits along military lines. The head of the order is called the Father-General, and there are rigid guidelines and steps before a man is ordained as a Jesuit priest. The Jesuit process, which is called formation, usually takes from 10-12 years, based on the applicant’s life experience. In addition to taking the normal priestly vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, a fully professed Jesuit swears a special fourth vow: obedience to the Pope and any missions he may request. Loyola’s creed for the Jesuit’s obedience to the Pope is eloquently stated here:

That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity with the Church herself, if she shall have defined anything to be black which appears to our eyes to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black. For we must undoubtingly believe, that the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of the Orthodox Church His Spouse, by which Spirit we are governed and directed to Salvation, is the same.

As the Jesuits constructed schools and universities in Europe, they also engaged in counter-Reformation activities. Poland and Bohemia were already strong Protestant bastions, but Loyola’s Jesuits were so effective that they turned these territories into the Catholic strongholds that they are today. The Jesuits also began extensive missionary work in the Americas and Asia. Francis Xavier spread the Gospels to Japan and China, following the Jesuit model of focusing conversion on the rulers and other powerful figures. As European expansion spread in the Americas, Jesuit mission activities and school construction came along with the explorers. Today there are 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States, an over 50 secondary schools. The order formed by St. Ignatius Loyola (he was canonized in 1622), had, and continues to have, a profound effect on civilization.

1 August 1972-Senator Thomas Eagleton withdraws as Democratic VP Nominee

Senator Thomas Eagleton, D-Missouri

The 1972 Presidential campaign is mostly known for the Watergate break-in and Nixon’s landslide victory over Senator George McGovern, but one of the factors in that victory was the selection and removal of Senator Thomas Eagleton as McGovern’s running mate.

By the time the Democrats convened for their convention in Miami, President Nixon appeared unbeatable, with a double-digit lead over McGovern in almost all national polls. Polling showed that the only way McGovern had a chance to beat Nixon was by selecting Senator Edward Kennedy as his running mate. Despite the Chappaquiddick disaster in 1969, Kennedy was still immensely popular amongst the Democratic faithful, but Kennedy adamantly refused to be on the ticket. His refusal was echoed by other high profile Democrats such as Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey (who had served and been humiliated as Johnson’s VP, losing the 68 election to Nixon by a whisker), Edmund Muskie and Birch Bayh, all of whom could smell the landslide defeat coming to McGovern in November. McGovern decided to offer the slot to Thomas Eagleton, Senator from Missouri, even though he knew very little about Eagleton. This lack of knowledge would prove to be his undoing.

Eagleton accepted the nomination, and promised to bring his medical records with him to Miami for McGovern’s review, but he didn’t. He also failed to tell McGovern and the Democratic party leadership that he had checked into a hospital 3 times between 1960 and 1966 for mental and physical exhaustion, depression, and on at least one hospital stay he had been given electro-shock therapy. His use of Thorazine, a powerful anti-depressant medication was also not disclosed, but when it came up during the initial meeting with McGovern, Eagleton dismissed any concerns about the drug, stating that the prescriptions were in his wife’s name, not his. That subterfuge should have been a red flag for McGovern, but he did nothing about any concerns he had.

When McGovern got the medical records, he read that Eagleton suffered from “manic-depressive” and “suicidal tendencies”. McGovern then called two of Eagleton’s doctors, both of whom said they had “grave concerns” about Eagleton’s mental health. Now McGovern was in trap. On the public level, if he dropped Eagleton, the Republicans would pounce on his terrible decision making and lack of vetting. If he didn’t drop him, he would face tremendous pressure from rank and file Democrats, many of whom already didn’t like him and saw him as an enormous albatross taking the party towards a massive electoral defeat in November.

On a private level, McGovern worried about how his daughter Teresa would handle the announcement that he was dropping Eagleton because of his mental health problems. Teresa, like Eagleton, also suffered from depression, which would ultimately lead to her death in 1994. The editorial pages of The Washington Post and New York Times added fuel to the fire, when both papers said that Eagleton had to be dropped from the ticket, warning that a man with these problems could not be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

McGovern initially said that he stood by Eagleton “1000%”, but pressure from party leaders continued to mount. Finally, McGovern made the decision to drop Eagleton, with Eagleton officially leaving the ticket on 1 August, 1972. Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law to Ted Kennedy, agreed to be the sacrificial lamb for the November slaughter, accepting McGovern’s offer of the VP nomination.

Later in life McGovern said he should have stuck by his initial decision to keep Eagleton, and he blamed his own ignorance of mental illness as the main reason for his decision to force Eagleton off the ticket. The selection of Eagleton and the cursory vetting showed just how much of the leadership of the Democratic party has passed out of the hands of the precinct captains and ward bosses and into the hands of the “people”, who proceeded to drive the party into a massive ditch. Nixon routed McGovern on 7 November 1972, carrying 49 states and 62% of the popular vote. McGovern carried Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. As the Watergate scandal erupted, I started seeing bumper stickers around my hometown of DC that read “Don’t blame me, I live in Massachusetts/DC”.

Eagleton went on with his Senate career, getting re-elected in 1974, 1980 and deciding not to run in 1986. After the Senate he was instrumental in brining the LA Rams to St. Louis. He died in 2007, and shortly after his death he was revealed as the source behind one of Robert Novak’s most explosive columns during the 1972 campaign. In May of 72 Novak published that “a Democratic senator says ‘people really don’t know McGovern. Once they get to know him, especially in the Midwest and heavily Catholic areas of the country, they’ll find out that he stands for amnesty, acid and abortion’” Amnesty, acid and abortion quickly became the smear Republicans used against McGovern, and when Novak was pressed to name his source, he approached Eagleton for permission to use his name. Eagleton refused, and Novak kept his secret until Eagleton died. There’s no doubt that McGovern would never have picked him as a running mate had he known the source of that quote.