Latest news with #Edsel
Chicago Tribune
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Production of Model T ended
Today is Monday, May 26, the 146th day of 2025. There are 219 days left in the year. This is Memorial Day. Today in history: On May 26, 1927, the Ford Model T officially ended production as Henry Ford and his son Edsel drove the 15 millionth Model T off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan. Also on this date: In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the Montana Territory. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred immigration from Asia and restricted the total number of immigrants from other parts of the world to 165,000 annually. In 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee was established by Congress. In 1940, Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during World War II. In 1954, an explosion occurred aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington off Rhode Island, killing 103 sailors. In 1967, the Beatles album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' was released. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in Moscow following the SALT I negotiations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. (The U.S. withdrew from the treaty under President George W. Bush in 2002.) In 1981, 14 people were killed when a Marine jet crashed onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off Florida. In 2009, California's Supreme Court upheld the state's Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that had taken place before the prohibition passed were still valid. (Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in June 2015.) 2009, President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2011, Ratko Mladić, the brutal Bosnian Serb general suspected of leading the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, was arrested after a 16-year manhunt. (Extradited to face trial in The Hague, Netherlands, Mladić was convicted in 2017 on genocide and war crimes charges and is serving a life sentence.) Today's Birthdays: Sportscaster Brent Musburger is 86. Singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks is 77. Actor Pam Grier is 76. Country singer Hank Williams Jr. is 76. Celebrity chef Masaharu Morimoto is 70. Actor Genie Francis is 63. Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait is 63. Musician Lenny Kravitz is 61. Actor Helena Bonham Carter is 59. Actor Joseph Fiennes is 55. Actor-producer-writer Matt Stone is 54. Singer-songwriter Lauryn Hill is 50. Singer Jaheim is 47.
New York Post
26-04-2025
- General
- New York Post
Dutch honor American war dead by ‘adopting' their graves
In the fall of 1945, a Dutch teenager named Frieda van Schaik wrote a letter to the US military seeking the address of the mother of an Army officer and Harvard-trained architect who was killed about a month before the German surrender. 'He is buried at the large US military cemetery in Margraten, Holland, a place of six miles from where I live,' she wrote. 'I am taking care of his grave.' Van Schaik's letter inquiring about Army Capt. Walter 'Hutch' Huchthausen sent US businessman and author Robert Edsel on an eight year odyssey to document the history of the little known Netherlands American Cemetery in the village of Margraten near the city of Maastricht. At the end of the Second World War, the cemetery contained the remains of more than 20,000 war dead, most of them Americans and all of them 'adopted' by locals in gratitude for their sacrifice in helping to liberate their country from Nazi tyranny. The Netherlands had been under Nazi occupation since May 10, 1940. It was liberated on May 5, 1945. 6 Frieda van Schaik was one of the Dutch care-takers who oversaw — and still oversee — the thousands of graves at Limburg commemorating US soldiers during World War II. Courtesy of Robert M. Edsel 6 van Schaik laying her bridal bouquet at the grave of Army Capt. Walter 'Hutch' Huchthausen. van Schaik later corresponded with Huchthausen's family to let them know that his memory was being preserved. Courtesy of Robert M. Edsel Edsel, 68, became obsessed with the adoption program and the story of the soldiers buried over the 65-acre burial ground after meeting van Schaik on Memorial Day in 2016, he said. The book is a testament to the people of the South Limburg region of the Netherlands who helped set up the cemetery and volunteered to honor the dead for the last 80 years. Each 'adopted' soldier's grave has been cared for by multiple generations of the same Dutch family. 'Families are now in their third generation, or fourth,' writes Edsel. 'Eighty years later, they write to the children, grandchildren, and extended family members of the fallen.' 6 An early Memorial Day ceremony at South Limburg, which drew some 30,000 visitors and locals. Courtesy of Robert M. Edsel 'Since spring 1946, when a committee of caring citizens in the small town of Margraten completed its work matching a local 'adopter' with every grave in the cemetery, no fallen American has been left without a mourner,' writes Edsel. 'This work is not a duty to these thousands of adopters; it is an honor.' Texas-based Edsel, a former pro tennis player who began his career in the oil and gas sector, is the author of the 'The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History,' which chronicles the work of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives division of the US Army, tasked with recovering cultural treasures stolen by the Nazis during the war. The book became a 2014 film directed by and starring George Clooney. Among the 'Monuments Men' buried in Margraten was Huchthausen, a 40-year-old professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota. In the spring of 1945, he made several trips to the German city of Aachen, on the border with the Netherlands and Belgium, to assess damage to historic monuments, including the Aachen Cathedral, one of Europe's oldest churches, which dates to 805. 6 Sgt. Jefferson Wiggins from Alabama was one of the 260 black grave diggers at Margraten. Courtesy of Robert M. Edsel On April 2, a month before the German surrender, Huchthausen and his driver crossed the Rhine River to investigate the looting of an altarpiece. They unwittingly drove into enemy-controlled territory and came under machine-gun fire. Huchthausen was killed instantly, and his body slumped over his driver, likely saving his life. In addition to soldiers killed in battle, Edsel also chronicles the men who initially dug thousands of graves by hand 'in the drenching rains of 1944' so that the US military could honor the dead where they fell. Most of the gravediggers belonged to the all-black 960th Quartermaster Service Company. They were housed in a drafty fruit warehouse and 'mud-caked and exhausted,' writes Edsel. 6 Robert M. Edsel's 'Remember Us.' Sgt. Jefferson Wiggins from Alabama was one of the 260 black grave diggers at Margraten. In 2009, Wiggins attended the 65th anniversary of the founding of the cemetery, and in his speech noted the irony of fighting for freedom from Nazi persecution but returning to a segregated America. 'During the war, we didn't often discuss our civil rights,' Wiggins said. 'But we certainly did realize that if we . . . were good enough to be sent to France, Belgium and the Netherlands, to liberate the people living there, we also were able to liberate ourselves at home.' Although the military offered to repatriate the remains of slain American soldiers back to the US, many of their family members decided to leave them at Margraten where there are currently 8,200 American war dead. 6 Author Robert M. Edsel. In September 1946, when Helen Moore arrived from Georgia to repatriate her son Bill Moore — who was 23-years-old when he was tortured and killed near the Dutch city of Apeldoorn — she was shocked to find a group of 1,200 Dutch mourners gathered in the rain for his memorial service. She spread red clay from a jar that she had brought from her home near the grave, and she decided that she would leave her son in Margraten among the Dutch residents who appreciated his sacrifice and 'honored him and cared for him as any mother could,' Edsel writes.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Joe Soucheray: Was politics a factor in Mary Moriarty's charity to Tesla vandal?
Having never driven a Tesla, but having sat in one in order to pretend to a friend that I thought the dominating computer screen was fascinating, I sensed no revulsion or any particular distaste for the car. Everybody dances to a different beat and if you want an electric car, a Tesla, then have at it, even if the front of a Tesla looks like the underbelly of a dolphin. And the Tesla truck is perhaps the ugliest machine ever manufactured. Some cars are so ugly that they become cool. You'd a pay a pretty penny these days for an Edsel, not in spite of its horse collar grill, but probably because of it. The Tesla truck looks like an industrial toaster or a hastily slapped together prop for a 1952 invasion-from-Mars movie. What were you thinking, Elon? There is no accounting for taste and the vehicle's novelty cannot be denied. Besides, the way we're going, cars will end up looking like hot dog buns and the Tesla truck will someday be as revered as a Ferrari. A fellow doesn't mean to pile on – Teslas have been getting keyed – but we have learned some lessons. Apparently, many of you who bought Teslas really, deep down, didn't care about saving the Earth. You cared about making a statement that you cared about saving the Earth. Otherwise, so many of you wouldn't now be plastering your cars with stickers that say, 'Don't blame me, I bought mine before Musk got to Washington.' But then Musk joined President Donald Trump and because the two of them are ideologically evil, it is now acceptable to insist that you find Musk dastardly, even though when you bought the car, you thought Musk was ideologically a genius. I guess the stickers promote a wish to have the cake and eat it, too. What changed? Well, Trump. Our governor hasn't helped. It would be a stretch to say that Tim Walz incited the destruction of property, but a couple of weeks back, on that whatever that tour of his is, he took great glee in Tesla's falling stock price. It is now believed that the governor didn't realize that his own State Board of Investment had 1.6 million shares of Tesla stock in its retirement fund or that Tesla owns a manufacturing plant in Brooklyn Park. In a riotous display of first-world angst, Teslas have been shot at, keyed and kicked. Tesla dealerships have been vandalized. And locally we have the astonishing case of Dylan Bryan Adams, a financial analyst in the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Adams was arrested recently in Minneapolis for allegedly keying at least six Tesla cars to the tune of more than $20,000 in damages. Allegedly seems redundant. Teslas are virtually rolling film studios. The cars filmed Adams in the act. It is unlikely Adams will be fired or even have a note placed in his file. He's been with the state since 2018 and nobody in the Walz administration has ever suffered any consequences for their incompetent handling of a $250 million food fraud. $20,000 is peanuts. In fact, Mary Moriarty, the Hennepin County attorney, has decided not to press felony charges against Adams. Instead, Adams was offered 'diversion,' meaning restitution and some community service work. It almost sounds like Moriarty said, 'Oh, what the hell, he was only keying Teslas.' It'd hard to know if Moriarty's charity to Adams reflected her politics. You have to wonder if she thought about it at all. My question will go unanswered. Adams was out walking his dog when he struck. Why wasn't he at work? Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@ Soucheray's 'Garage Logic' podcast can be heard at Jim Gelbmann: Our partisan endorsement process is unrepresentative, polarizing and self-serving Ed Lotterman: What if the Fed set a trap for Trump? Skywatch: A crow, a cup and a water snake Real World Economics: Powell hits first; Trump hits back Working Strategies: Random thoughts: Stretching job titles and happy places
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Alabama soldier featured in new WWII book by ‘Monuments Men' author Robert Edsel
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — Robert Edsel doesn't see himself as an author. More accurately, the New York Times-bestselling writer whose 2009 book, 'Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History,' was turned into a movie featuring George Clooney and Matt Damon, sees himself as a messenger. The same way 'Monuments Men' was about to telling the overlooked story of American soldiers seeking to take part art stolen by the Nazis across Europe, Edsel is now trying to tell another story often overlooked in recollections of World War II. 'Remember Us: American Sacrifice, Dutch Freedom, and A Forever Promise Forged in World War II,' which will be published by Harper Collins on April 29, tells the story of soldiers stationed in the Netherlands and the way the Dutch people continue to celebrate their service in protecting them during the war. 'If you don't understand the horror and challenges for these people who fought this battle, you can't fully appreciate the remarkable moment of grace the book offers,' Edsel said. In 'Remember Us,' Edsel tells the story of soldiers who fought to protect the town of Margraten. As the death toll began to rise, many of these Americans were buried in the Netherlands American Cemetery. One of the soldiers who was responsible for these burials was Sgt. Jeff Wiggins, who grew up in a sharecropping family in Dothan, Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. Following an attack by the Ku Klux Klan at his home, Wiggins sought to leave the racially charged state, lying to the Army so that he join. Saying he was 19 years old, Wiggins was only 16. Part of the book not only deals with Wiggins' work burying his fellow soldiers, but also the culture shock of the Dutch people on getting to know a Black man for the first time. 'I think Jeff, like other Black soldiers, enjoyed being in Europe because they had never seen a Black human being,' he said. 'There's one moment where children would run up to him and rub his skin because they didn't know if it would come out.' However, Edsel said Wiggins' time in the Netherlands weighed heavily on him, seeing so much death in the weeks he was there. 'They were going to dig graves until they were told to stop,' he said. 'It was a horrible job and Jeff had many nightmares for years afterward.' After the war, Wiggins would go back to Dothan, where he would receive his high school diploma. He later taught at Southeast Alabama High School in Dothan and was recalled to duty in 1950. He died in 2013. However, Edsel said 'Remember Us' is a story about love and how decades after the war ended, those in Margraten still pay their respects to the Americans buried at American Cemetery. 'It's a timeless story of remembrance and love,' he said. 'It underscores the point that everyone, know matter who you are, want to be remembered by somebody.' With Memorial Day coming up May 26, Edsel is encouraging people to remember those who fought for America by seeking to connect with one another. 'It's important to remember who we are as a country, that sense of connectedness that people are doing all they can to preserve the history of the country,' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Forbes
07-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Current Climate: Trump Tariffs Could Kill The Clean Energy Boom
Current Climate brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability every Monday. Sign up to get it in your inbox. Getty Images President Trump's across-the-board tariffs on virtually all consumer and industrial goods the U.S. imports triggered a stock market meltdown last week and are fanning fears of recession. On top of that the move is likely to sharply jack up prices for solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, key elements of the renewable power boom the country is enjoying. China, hit with a 34% tariff increase, is the world's largest producer of those products, though in the case of solar cells and components, the U.S. is more reliant on imports from Southeast Asia. Trump's tariffs of 46% on Vietnam, 36% on Thailand, 24% on Malaysia and 49% on Cambodia mean photovoltaic goods from those countries will soon be dramatically more expensive, discouraging new solar installations. And although imports of wind-related equipment have dropped since 2020, the industry remains reliant on turbine blades made by non-U.S. producers, according to Wood Mackenzie. Prior to last week's announcement, it estimated Trump's tariffs would boost the cost of new onshore wind projects by 7%. Domestic manufacturing of clean energy products has been growing, though the scale is still a fraction of China's and is unlikely to expand dramatically in the near term as the Trump Administration is also working to pull back or end funding for clean energy projects that flourished under his predecessor. That's unfortunate as renewable energy accounted for a record 24% of U.S. electricity production last year. 'Tariffs require a strategic approach with clear timelines to allow continued certainty for the American people, businesses and our economy,' said Vanessa Sciarra, vice president of trade & international competitiveness for the American Clean Power Association. 'The policy whiplash from these tariffs will ultimately undermine the ability to realize a domestic supply chain and will constrain efforts to deliver energy security and reliability for Americans.' Trump's strategy may be to use tariffs as a bargaining tool and begin to dial them back soon, but right now it looks like they'll throw the clean energy boom of recent years off track. Illustration by Fernando Capeto for Forbes; Photos byandThe list of famous auto industry flops is long and storied, topped by stinkers like Ford's Edsel and exploding Pinto and General Motors's unsightly Pontiac Aztek crossover SUV. Even John Delorean's sleek, stainless-steel DMC-12, iconic from its role in the 'Back To The Future' films, was a sales dud that drove the company to bankruptcy. Elon Musk's pet project, the dumpster-driving Tesla Cybertruck, now tops that list. After a little over a year on the market, sales of the 6,600-pound vehicle, priced from $82,000, are laughably below what Musk predicted. Its lousy reputation for quality–with eight recalls in the past 13 months, the latest for body panels that fall off–and polarizing look made it a punchline for comedians. Unlike past auto flops that just looked ridiculous or sold badly, Musk's truck is also a focal point for global Tesla protests spurred by the billionaire's job-slashing DOGE role and MAGA politics. 'It's right up there with Edsel,' said Eric Noble, president of consultancy CARLAB and a professor at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California (Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen, who styled Cybertruck for Musk, is a graduate of its famed transportation design program). 'It's a huge swing and a huge miss.' Read more here Waymo You have a fast-growing fleet of robotaxis that are also electric vehicles. It's several hundred now and will probably grow to thousands. What are the upsides and challenges? There are a lot of upsides. From a sustainability perspective, obviously, these are cleaner. They're quieter as well, which is a really great experience for our customers. And they're actually cleaner to be around. You don't get the same sort of emissions and things like that. Operationally, electric platforms are much safer to deal with. We have people who are managing the operations in the background and EVs add another element of safety and are just a better working environment for our operators since they're not working with dangerous fuels. The challenge is the infrastructure. That's a big piece that we're really focused on building out, that electric [charging] infrastructure. Do you build your own charging stations at Waymo depots? We work with partners. One of the big aspects of our story is that we're partnering with the ecosystem to really bring [autonomous vehicles] and EVs along. Finding partners is a big piece of that. Building out the electric infrastructure is complicated for a variety of reasons. We need a lot of power. There are different sorts of zoning restrictions, things like that, different types of permits that we need. We're working through that. Having systems that are fully digital we can have very good predictions about when we're going to need to charge the vehicles and what their shift life will be like throughout the course of the day. Similarly, with the charging infrastructure, we know when it's going to be up and running and when it's going to need maintenance. Things like that are really key to allowing us to make the most of the fleet. Since charging EVs takes a lot of time compared with gasoline fueling, are you having vehicles out of service for a couple of hours at a time, which reduces utilization rates? We use Level-3 charging, so it's much faster. And then there are things the vehicle needs to do periodically. We want to make sure that the car is as clean as possible, right? That's a great thing to do during the charging cycle. All that sort of maintenance we compress into the charging cycle and that allows us to maximize the utility. Why the megarich insist on buying homes in extreme weather zones. They aren't just purchasing property in areas prone to hurricanes, flooding and extreme drought—they're also paying record prices to do so (Wall Street Journal) Years of climate action demolished in days. Trump's environmental directives are gutting basic protections for Americans and the agencies designed to deliver them (Bloomberg) Why Al Gore is shifting his climate activism abroad. Given the Trump administration's recent moves relating to climate, the former vice president is looking to the developing world for the next generation of climate activism (New York Times) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is poised to eliminate most websites tied to its research division under plans for the cancellation of a cloud web services contract, a move that could snarl operations at several labs (Bloomberg) States lead on landfill methane emissions as federal action stalls. The EPA was set to tighten rules on landfill operators. With Trump in charge, state policies may be the nation's best bet at curbing these emissions (Canary Media)
