Convicts Arrive at Botany Bay I

PermalinkToday's AMIT,
Lead: The prisons of England were just too crowded: something had to be done.

Intro.: "A Moment in Time" with Dan Roberts.

Content: To solve the problem of a growing prison population in England, the government began in 1718 to deport or transport prisoners to the colonies in the American South. They were sold to shipping contractors who would sell them to plantation owners as workers on the coastal estates. This method of transportation ended with the coming of the American Revolution and the population of the prisons began to creep back up.

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Crash of the Hindenburg IV

PermalinkToday's AMIT, , ,
Lead: On May 6, 1937 the German airship Hindenburg, filled with 97 passengers and crew and tons of highly flammable hydrogen gas, was preparing to land at the U.S. Naval Station at Lakehurst, NJ at the end of an uneventful first transatlantic trip of the season.

Intro.: "A Moment in Time" with Dan Roberts.

Content: Herbert Morrison was an announcer for WLS in Chicago. He was in Lakehurst to describe to a live radio audience the arrival of the Hindenburg on that overcast May afternoon. This is the voice of Herbert Morrison.

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Crash of the Hindenburg III

PermalinkToday's AMIT, , , ,
Lead: Expanded to huge dimensions and filled with highly flammable hydrogen gas, German airships became an important element of Hitler’s propaganda machine.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 one of the most important champions of the German Airship was Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. The Fuhrer himself was not impressed and refused to set foot in a dirigible, feeling them a creation contrary to nature. Without Goebbel’s enthusiasm the Zeppelin program would probably have died since the construction of a large airship was as costly as that of a heavy battleship.

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Crash of the Hindenburg II

PermalinkToday's AMIT, , , ,
Lead: Used as bombers during World War I, giant German lighter-than-air ships called Zeppelins were turned to commercial uses in the 1920s and 1930s.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: If one wanted to travel between continents in the early 1900s, there was one choice. You had to go by ship. While the dream of flight had been realized first by balloons and then by the Wright Brothers’ airplane, aircraft engines were not strong, efficient, or safe enough to lift cargo and passengers over long distances. For just over two short decades from World War I to the eve of World War II, the dirigible seemed to be the solution to fast intercontinental travel.

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Crash of the Hindenburg I

PermalinkToday's AMIT, ,
Lead: The destruction of the dirigible Hindenburg brought to a halt this method of realizing man's dream of flying.

Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Beginning in the 1700s, men had begun to break the restraints of gravity and soar into the air using lighter-than-air craft, namely balloons lifted by heated air. At first the heat came from earth bound fires and then means of carrying the heat source along for the ride extended the time of the flight.

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The Keziah Affair, 1858

PermalinkA Petersburg Moment in Time

During the 1850s, with increasing desperation, the white population of the Upper South witnessed the success of slaves escaping North, both through individual exploits and organized efforts such as the Underground Railroad. In 1855 the Norfolk Southern Argus wrote that the “frequent escapes of fugitives from our port” were “an intolerable evil.” The next year the Virginia General Assembly required that all ships leaving the state for the North had to be inspected. With this heightened scrutiny and white anger came increasing resourcefulness on the part of slaves and their allies assisting in their escape.
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The Lincoln and Grant Meeting

PermalinkA Petersburg Moment in Time, ,

The climactic events leading to the collapse of the Confederacy began on April 1, 1865 when Union forces defeated the two divisions of General George Pickett at the Battle of Five Forks. Lee could no longer hold Petersburg or stop the Yankees from cutting the Southside railroad. It was time for a breakthrough and General Grant seized the moment in a series of coordinated attacks that broke the siege and put Union troops into Petersburg proper.
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Muslim Conquest of Spain I

PermalinkToday's AMIT, , ,

Lead: The expansion of Islam in the centuries after the Prophet Muhammad’s death flowed east to India and west to the Visigothic kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula. Spain had powerful Moorish rule for more than seven centuries.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: From 712 to 1492 some part of Spain was under Muslim control. At high tide, Arabs ruled almost all of Iberia. In the end, only Granada, dominated by the massive Alhambra fortress, could resist the Reconquista, the re-conquest of the peninsula, led finally by Christian forces united under Ferdinand and Isabella. The city surrendered in the year Spain turned its attention outward and sent Christopher Columbus on his journey to a new world.
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