Good morning.
We’ll have a sixty percent chance of thunderstorms today, mostly in the morning, with a high of eighty-five.
Downtown Whitewater’s board meets this morning at 8 AM, and the Fire-Rescue Task Force will meet later today at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1948, America begins the Berlin Airlift:
U.S. and British pilots begin delivering food and supplies by airplane to Berlin after the city is isolated by a Soviet Union blockade.
Though some in U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s administration called for a direct military response to this aggressive Soviet move, Truman worried such a response would trigger another world war. Instead, he authorized a massive airlift operation under the control of General Lucius D. Clay, the American-appointed military governor of Germany. The first planes took off from England and western Germany on June 26, loaded with food, clothing, water, medicine and fuel.
By July 15, an average of 2,500 tons of supplies was being flown into the city every day. The massive scale of the airlift made it a huge logistical challenge and at times a great risk. With planes landing at Tempelhof Airport every four minutes, round the clock, pilots were being asked to fly two or more round-trip flights every day, in World War II planes that were sometimes in need of repair.
The Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949, having earned the scorn of the international community for subjecting innocent men, women and children to hardship and starvation. The airlift–called die Luftbrucke or “the air bridge” in German–continued until September 1949, for a total delivery of more than 1.5 million tons of supplies and a total cost of over $224 million.
Puzzability continues its series about cars, running from 6.24 to 6.28:
Assembly Line
This week—summer road trip! For each day, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the make and model of an old car.
Example:
Body’s energy important in acupuncture / penultimate word in many fairy tales / Hogwarts mail carrier / scraped into, as a pattern in glass / compete / large often-canvas bag
Answer:
Chevrolet Chevette (chi / ever / owl / etched / vie / tote)
Here’s the puzzle for Wednesday:
Upper limb / toothed wheel that’s part of a larger machine / paper package amount / king of the jungle.
The AMC Gremlin was designed as one of the first fuel-efficient subcompact cars, and after a California university modified a 1972 model to run on hydrogen, (the first car ever to emit cleaner air than it took in) it was driven to and permanently parked in a Nevada car museum. I wonder if I can get some tiny mischievous gnomes to bust it out for me.
I’d like to see that car. The Gremlin, in general, remains famous even a generation later — ahead of its time, perhaps.
My pleasure to post them, and happy that you like them – good fun, I think.