On this day: Martin Luther King is Stabbed

Izola Curry under arrest.

On the 20th of September, 1958 a woman by the name of Izola Curry approached US civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, New York. After confirming the man she was speaking to was King, she stabbed him in the chest with an ivory handled letter opener. It was also discovered Curry had a gun hidden in her bra.

The crime was considered especially unusual as Curry was African American.

Being treated with the blade still in his chest.

The blade was so close to King’s aorta that it was feared he’d die if he moved suddenly. The weapon was removed via surgery.

With his wife Coretta in hospital on the 30th of September.

Curry was committed to a mental institution, and continued to live in various facilities until her death at the age of ninety-eight in 2015.

More information can be found HERE and HERE.

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Eighty Years Ago: Australia’s Women’s National Emergency Legion is Formed

Horsewoman in the Australian Women’s Emergency Legion. September 1939. X

The Women’s National Emergency Legion, an auxiliary organisation in Australia during the Second World War, was formed in September of 1938.

Based in Brisbane, Queensland, only women of British origin were allowed to join.

Article from The Morning Bulletin. Rockhampton. 18 November 1938.

Women considered eligible were provided with training in areas considered necessary to the war effort, such as first aid and truck driving.

Miss Tony Mitchell at Somerville House in Brisbane, 1942. Mitchell drove cars and trucks for the US Army. X

When war broke out in the Pacific at the end of 1941 women were attached to US military units to work as drivers and clerks. They also worked for British and Dutch units based in Australia.

The organisation ceased operations a couple of years after the end of the war.

On this day: the end of the United States Army Air Forces

Propaganda recruitment poster dated 1944.

The United States Army Air Forces, the aerial warfare service used by the Americans in the Second World War, was officially disbanded on the 18th of September, 1947. Unlike some other nations, the United States had no separate air force at the time.

Women’s Army Corps members at Randolph Field, Texas in 1944. X

The Forces, formed in 1941, the year the US entered the war, had been steadily diminished in size after the surrender of Japan in 1945. The service was replaced by the new and independent Air Force soon afterwards.

1943 bombing campaign against oil fields in Romania.

During the war the USAAF took part in campaigns against both Nazi Germany and its allies, and in the Pacific.

On this day: Britain claims an islet.

On the 18th of September, 1955, Britain claimed Rockall. Situated in the North Atlantic Ocean, the uninhabited granite islet is 370 kilometres east of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.

In the image above Lt. Cdr. Scott RN raises the Union Flag with the words:

‘In the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, I hereby take possession of this Island of Rockall.’

Royal Marine Commando Cpl. Alexander A. Fraser stands beside him.

In March, 1943 a 170-foot wave crashing into the islet was photographed by the Royal Air Force.

Sixty Years Ago: British Ballet in Australia

10th September 1958: New Zealand-born ballerina Rowena Jackson stars in a (British) Royal Ballet performance of Swan Lake at the Empire Theatre in Sydney, Australia.

September 1975

A view of Newby Bridge in Cumbria, England in early autumn of 1975.

On this day: Celebrations in Brussels

Source

4th September 1944: The residents of Brussels, Belgium cheer for Belgian and British troops as they enter the city. Brussels was liberated the day before, after more than four years of Nazi occupation.