50th Anniversary Of John Glenn Mercury Mission

Fifty years ago John Glenn became the fifth human being launched into space and the first American to orbit the earth when he climbed into Friendship 7 and rocketed into space from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 14 on this date in 1962.

His historic flight took him four hours and 56 minutes to orbit the Earth three times before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

The successful manned orbital mission paved the way for NASA to proceed with the remaining three Mercury orbital flight missions and put the United States on the path toward fulfilling President Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. 

After retiring from NASA Glenn entered the political arena and served as the Democratic US senator for Ohio from 1974-1999.

Glenn holds another American spaceflight distinction as the oldest person to fly in space.   At age 77 he was part of the STS-95 mission that flew aboard the shuttle Discovery from October 29-November 7, 1998.

But the road to the successful Apollo 11 mission started with John Glenn's mission that launched fifty years ago today.

My Hit Counter's 5th Anniversary

Today marks the 5th anniversary of the day that I installed a hit counter on this blog and yes, there's a story behind it.

I'd just celebrated TransGriot's first blogiversary and was curious to find out exactly how many people were reading my nascent blog.  

It happened to be King Day 2007 when I finally got around to doing so and once I did install it I was startled to discover I was getting 400 people a day visiting it.

From that day forward I stepped up my blog writing game in quality and the frequency of how often I post here at TransGriot and it has thankfully paid off. 


I get almost ten times the number of people visiting now on a daily basis as I did on January 17, 2007. At the time I compiled this anniversary post I've had a total of 3,309,654 people surf by or continue to check with me and see what I and my guest posters have to say about a wide variety of subjects including trans ones.

And I thank you readers for continuing to stop by my cyberhome to do so. 

Happy 104th Anniversary AKA!

As you longtime readers know I have much love for Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

I grew up surrounded by proud college educated African-American women who wore the sorority's salmon pink and apple green colors and were (or still are) trailblazing leaders in mine and other communities in the States and around the world.  

Some of those AKA women are in my own family as well and I used to read my mom's Ivy Leaf magazines when she and my sister were done with them.  

I'm taking a moment to give a TransGriot shout out to all my AKA readers who are celebrating the January 15, 1908 day on the Howard University campus 104 years ago that the world's first African-American Greek letter sorority was founded and later incorporated by African-American women. 

Happy Founders Day AKA!
  . 

Happy New Year 2012 -Happy TransGriot Blogiversary!

It's 2012.. Happy New Year TransGriot readers!   

Today also happens to be TransGriot blogiversary in which on this date six years ago my first post went up on my then fledgling blog. 

Six years later I have over 3.2 million hits and counting on this blog, over 5000 posts, a worldwide following, multiple nominations and awards for what I write here and the love, respect and admiration of my blogging peers and people inside and outside the trans community.

But without you loyal readers stopping by on a regular basis, spending your valuable web surfing time reading the posts I compile here and recommending them to your friends and associates, I wouldn't have achieved it as quickly as I have. 

Yes, I have mad writing skills and talent.  A lot of hard work has gone into building this blog and is a major  part of my formula for success here, but you readers are the most important piece of it.   

You can bet that I'll have a lot to say about what's going on in 2012 inside and outside the trans community here in the States and around the world.

Will I write more than 1563 posts like I did last year?   Well, considering it's a critical election year in the United States and the Summer Olympics are just two of the major events happening in 2012, maybe.

Happy New Year!
 

70th Anniversary Of The Pearl Harbor Attack

70 years ago today the Sunday morning calm at Hawaii's Pearl Harbor was broken at 7:55 AM local time by a surprise Japanese attack on the bases and airfields in the area from six carriers commanded by Imperial Japanese Navy Admiral Chuichi Nagumo and a two wave carrier aircraft strike force under the command of IJN Captain Mitsuo Fuchida. 

The Japanese were also busy that morning on the other side of the International Date Line launching air attacks on Hong Kong, Singapore, Guam, Wake Island and Clark Air base near Manila.  

They also launched ground invasions of Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Malaya in the opening steps of their drive to conquer Southeast Asia and build what they euphemistically called the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

But the Japanese were deeply concerned about the US Pacific Fleet and its 3 carriers, 8 battleships and other ships anchored at Pearl Harbor.  They wished to neutralize it before they continued their plans of military conquest. 



'The day that will live in infamy' as President Franklin Roosevelt called it resulted in the catastrophic loss of the battleship USS Arizona when its magazine exploded and three other battleships, damage to four others, the battleship USS Nevada grounded, 2 destroyers sunk, 188 aircraft destroyed, 2402 people killed along with 57 civilians and 1247 people wounded.   




Fortunately for the United States the carriers USS Lexington, USS Enterprise and USS Hornet were not at Pearl Harbor on that fateful day and Admiral Nagumo decided not to launch a third air strike to lay waste to the drydocks, oil storage tank farm and other Pearl Harbor support facilities and head back to the Japanese home islands despite the urging of Captain Fuchida and other officers to do so . The successful surprise attack galvanized and unified the US population on a level we haven't seen since and led to the entry of the United States into World War II.

\n"; document.getElementById('resselect').value=zoomres; } -->

Ecole Polytechnique Massacre Anniversary

December 6, 1989 is a date that Canadian women will never forget.  It is the anniversary of the worst school shooting ever conducted in Canada.

Canadians lover their flags to half staff and remember the fourteen women whose lives were cut short on that horrific.day in Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

Thirteen of them were students at the Ecloe Polytechnique.  Twelve were studying engineering, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz was a nursing student, and Maryse Laganière worked in the school's financial services office.. 

It was perpetrated by Marc Lépine, who harbored a deep seated hatred of women and feminism, and believed that both were ruining his life.  A little after 4 PM EST he barged into one of the classrooms in the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, separated the nine female students from the male ones and after declaring he hated feminists, shot them all, killing six.  

Lépine roamed the building for the next twenty terrifying minutes killing another seven students, a female clerk  in the financial services office, and wounded another 21 people in a twenty minute span before killing himself in a third floor classroom.

The suicide note found on Lépine had a list of another 19 women in Quebec that he planned to kill because he perceived them to be feminists.  The list included journalist and feminist newspaper founder Francine Pelletier, a union leader, a politician, a television personality and six female police officers who came to his attention because they played together on a volleyball team.    

The Ecole Polytechnique massacre led to the passage of the Firearms Act in 1995 that ushered in stricter gun control regulations in Canada.  The Firearms Act includes a gun registry that the Conservative Harper government has been trying to overturn since they gained power in 2008.

On the anniversary of the event last year I posted an essay that Renee of Womanist Musings had previously written about the tragedy..    


In 1991, Canada’s Parliament declared December 6 a National Day of Mourning and the National Day to End Violence Against Women with flags lowered to half staff across the nation to commemorate the day.

Elsewhere around the world, we should  also take a moment to reflect on women who are senselessly killed every day around the world by violence aimed at them for simply being who they are.