1961

I find 1961 to be a year that we should all take time to examine and see all the things that were going on around the world.

In January of that year Patrice Lumumba the 1^st democratically elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo was assassinated,(If you ever want to see how White Supremacy really works, just study the history of Zaire and later the Democratic Republic of Congo).

Another big event that January was that the U.S.’s 34^th President Dwight  Eisenhower was leaving office, and he stunned the world with his chilling “Military Industrial Complex” Farewell Address. In the speech he warns about the military and the weapons industry and how we can never let them get in the way of democracy.

On January 20^th, John F. Kennedy became the 35^th (and youngest) president of the United States of America.

Later that that year in April Yuri Gagarin became the 1^st man in space, the Soviet Union had beat the U.S. to space, that was very big news, for the Soviets.

In April there was the Bay of Pigs, which was the failed invasion of Cuba, after which President Kennedy threatened to dismantle the C.I.A. into a thousand pieces and he said he would scatter it into the  winds.

In April of 1961 Adolph Eichmann was on trial in Jerusalem for his part in the Holocaust, and  he would be executed the following year.

On August 13^th,the Berlin wall was first erected. They could not build a wall overnight, so first barbed wire was laid out and it would be nailed down with wooden saw horses. Later with the year actual walls were build and before year's end there would be 4 different generations of types of Berlin Walls.

In the summer of 1961 there was a homerun chase in the U.S., Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris both teammates on the New York Yankees where having great years behind the plate and were giving it their all trying to break Babe Ruth’s 60 Homerun record which had stood since 1927.

I can't help but wonder, was the homerun chase of 1961 just a sideshow to get people’s mind off of all the problems around the world?  I first thought this when I looked at Roger Maris’s career stats. To me this did not add up. He had never hit over 39 homeruns and now he was trying to beat Babe Ruth’s 60 homerun record that had stood for several decades. Well in the end Maris did hit 61 homeruns in 1961, so could all of these things been a reason for a need to have a distraction to get people’s minds off of all this Cold War,  and a world on the  verge of Nuclear War.

So after the Yankees beat the Reds in the World Series of 1961, something else really big happened. in October the Berlin Crisis of 1961 happened. See it had been decided during the World War 2 conferences that American soldiers could drive to the Soviet checkpoint directly in front of Check Point Charlie, and just by looking at their vehicles license plates, the Soviet or G.D.R. soldiers would let the U.S. soldiers visit the G.D.R. for the day, to either shop, or visit theatrical productions. So after Walter Ulbricht who was in charge of  the East Germany made some changes outside of Nikita Krushchev’s knowledge. Walter Ulbricht asked his soldier to ask the U.S. soldiers for their I.D.’s, and no longer just license plates, so on the 22nd of October a U.S. Diplomat comes to the checkpoint and he is asked for his I.D. and he refuses to show it, and so he informs Gen. Lucius Clay who is the man in charge, and the U.S. sends militarized vehicles to push the diplomat on through, and this continues for the next three days until the U.S. sends ten tanks on the 25th of October. Two days later on the 27th the Soviets counter with ten tanks of their own, but they also had 23 tanks on Unten den Linden, which was just a few blocks away. For 16-17 hours you had tanks staring at each other ready to fire on the enemy given the first provocation.  tanks firmly parked in direct aim of each other, with Soviet MIG’s flying above just waiting for an order; In the end Kennedy and Krushchev settled this matter, like they did the following years Cuban Missle Crisis of October 1962.

One more important thing to  remember about this year is that In 1961 there were 800 military advisors in Vietnam, and Kennedy wanted to pull the troops out, but he was killed in Dallas on the  22^nd  of November  1963. The war in Indonesia ended up killing several million people, and is one horrible reminder of this cold war.