This week, the James Webb Space Telescope zooms in on the iconic Sombrero Galaxy, revealing the first-ever mid-infrared observations of the hat-shaped wonder.

The trip aims to lay the foundation for a new U.S. approach to Africa in response to growing communist Chinese influence on the continent, an official said.President Joe Biden is traveling to Angola on…

This is a health crisis.

Proof at last!

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A timeless classic. The post The strange backstory to the blues classic ‘Midnight Special’ first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

by Brian Shilhavy, Health Impact News: Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Astana, Kazakhstan, last week during a two-day Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit. Most of his public remarks were about the war in Ukraine and their just launched new missile, the Oreshnik. But something else he said publicly, was that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, […]

  A banana seems innocuous enough, but the history of the fruit is one bathed in blood, racism, and a relentless pursuit of wealth. Today, the most popular fruit in the world ranks as one of the highest export crops in several Central and South American countries. However, large-scale banana cultivation was not a natural manifestation; it was manipulated from the start. Foreign powers, perhaps most predominantly United Fruit, were the puppet masters for the development and growth of the banana industry—at the expense of thousands of lives and an irreparable environmental toll.   Founders of an Empire Lorenzo Dow Baker. Source: the Library of Congress   The co-founders of the United Fruit Company were business-minded and well-connected from the start. Minor Keith was born in New York in 1848, the son of a lumber tycoon and woman whose family was heavily involved in the prosperous railroad industry. His counterpart, Andrew Preston, hailing from Beverly, Massachusetts, was not as well-connected from birth but excelled at impressing investors and creating profitable projects. Preston had plans for an import business based out of Boston, and with the success of a small fruit business he had engineered working with Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker, he decided to focus on the importation of fresh fruit. In 1887, Preston incorporated the Boston Fruit Company.   Bananas in a market in a Lunghaiu Wandloa photo. Source: The Moscow Times   Preston soon became heavily involved in the importation of bananas. His biggest challenge was keeping his product fresh and lasting long enough to ensure consumers received a quality, appealing product. Even with a fleet of ships taking the fruit to numerous American ports, including New Orleans and Philadelphia, the life of the picked fruit was relatively limited. To remedy this, Preston created a refrigerated distribution network to take his bananas from the East Coast to points across the United States. With this implementation, the American banana import industry boomed.   Tomas Guardia Gutierrez featured on a 2019 Costa Rican postage stamp. Source: Universal Postal Union   Meanwhile, Minor Keith didn’t intend to become involved in the fruit business. He started out in the cattle industry, operating a ranch his father had purchased in Texas. However, in 1871, he left farming when his uncle, Henry Meiggs, a heavy hitter in the railroad industry, invited Keith to Costa Rica to work with him. In that year, Costa Rica’s president, Tomas Guardia Gutierrez, was seeking to implement a railroad running to the Atlantic in order to improve the country’s ability to export coffee.   Keith’s project was the start of an extensive Costa Rican railroad system that is still in place today. Source: Incofer   The finished railroad would connect the capital city, San Jose, with Limon, a port city on the ocean. Keith quickly rose to prominence on the project and took command when his uncle died in 1874. The people conducting the physical labor in building the railroad were locals, Jamaicans, Chinese, and Italians seeking opportunity. Instead, they found work camps with poor sanitation, low wages, and miserable conditions.   Yellow fever quickly made its way through the labor force, depleting it significantly. About 5,000 workers perished during the building project. As a result, Keith imported prisoners from New Orleans to complete the job. As a way to cheaply feed the masses of workers who were on the project, Keith began planting bananas on the land owned by the railroad. Bananas were suited to Costa Rica’s humid air and tropical climate. Believed to have originated in southeast Asia, then spread to Africa and later the Americas, varieties of the fruit have been consumed since the early days of human civilization.   Buying Into Bananas A Paul Popper photo shows bananas being loaded into a United Fruit train in Costa Rica in 1915. Source: Yale Insights   Once the railroad was completed, Keith began exporting his bananas overland. His first few shipments were quite successful, and Keith started seeking out opportunities to expand his enterprise. He purchased stakes in existing companies and soon transported extensive volumes of fruit to Limon.   Despite his success, in 1899, Keith suffered a setback as his bank failed, and he lost over one million dollars. To help keep his banana empire alive, Keith visited Boston and approached Preston about a potential merger. They settled on terms, and the United Fruit Company was born. Combining their two firms, they controlled 75% of the banana market in the United States. Within one month, they had absorbed seven independent Honduran banana-producing companies under their umbrella.   Creating Banana Republics A 1910 photo of a United Fruit dock in New Orleans by A.L. Barnett. Source: Library of Congress   United Fruit continued its expansion, and by 1905, it controlled land in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama, in addition to Costa Rica and Honduras. Often, these lands were acquired in trade for railroad construction or other public works projects. As the company’s land grew, so did its political influence in Central America. In some countries, the entire economy centered around the growth of bananas for United Fruit, resulting in designation as “banana republics.”   Banana harvesting in Ecuador. Eric St-Pierre Photo. Source: Food Empowerment Project   The United Fruit Company came to control every aspect of their business’ supply chain. They controlled the lives of their workforce, providing housing, medical facilities, and stores for plantation workers. Pathetic wages, few rights, and poor sanitation were the norm, with workers having little freedom to unionize or otherwise demand better treatment. Workers were often paid in vouchers instead of cash, which had to be used at company stores.   Constructing and absorbing telegraph and railroad companies gave the company incredible power in the regions where it operated. While these forms of infrastructure seemed to promise to improve the areas they inhabited, with large populations of people who had traditionally been marginalized on the basis of race, they often failed to do so.   While United Fruit’s vertical integration appeared to bring new technologies, these projects were executed with care, focusing on the company’s profit potential. For example, while new roads were desperately needed in many areas, the company utilized its influence to determine where they would be built amid fears that certain roads might take away from the railroads it built, which had become quite profitable.   A cut stem of a banana plant shows damage from Panama Disease. Jeff Daniells photo. Source: New South Wales Department of Primary Industries   Thousands of acres of virgin jungle were razed to create new company banana plantations. The people who lived in these areas were generally poor outsiders who were displaced by these land grabs. With no other options, many went to work for the company.   When disease affected the plants, areas were simply abandoned. For example, in 1903, United Fruit experienced its first bout of Fusarium wilt, or “Panama Disease.” A fungal infection that prevents a banana plant from completing necessary water uptake, the disease is generally fatal to the plants. When the disease was identified, and plants started dying, the company simply abandoned thousands of acres of plantations and went on the search for new land to acquire and convert.   Cultivating Success The cover of a menu from the Great White Fleet. Source: New York Public Library Collections   In owning every aspect of production and export, United Fruit eventually possessed dozens of ships to move their bananas to the United States. By 1900, 25-30 ships were arriving in American ports weekly from various United Fruit divisions. To help dispel the heat of the tropical sun, the ships were painted white, soon giving them the name “The Great White Fleet.” Soon realizing that there was more profit to be gained from the ships, the company began offering passage on the boats, turning them into combination cargo ships and cruise lines.   An advertisement for canned bananas by United Fruit, likely in the 1950s. Source: Washington Banana Museum   Maintaining the banana republics was a major ongoing concern of United Fruit and its competitors, such as Cuyamel Fruit Company (eventually absorbed by United) and Standard Fruit (now known as Dole), who were also heavily invested in Central American politics. The governments of these countries were generally heavily invested in the success of the fruit companies to the disservice of their own citizens. While the companies grew wealthy, building infrastructure that benefitted them, workers remained impoverished and subjugated. United Fruit and its contemporaries saw no issue with interfering with governments to suit their needs.   Puppet Masters of Guatemala Glorioso Victoria by Diego Rivera illustrates the 1954 action in Guatemala. Featured center is John Foster Dulles, with brother Allen in his ear, shaking hands with Carlos Castillo Armas. Source: Zinn Education Project   Perhaps the most famous example of this occurred in 1954 when Guatemala elected a new president, Jacobo Arbenz, the first to be chosen democratically. One of Arbenz’s moves was to take thousands of acres of United Fruit lands and redistribute them to landless peasants. In return, the company would receive government bonds based on the tax value that they themselves had declared on the land: $627,572 for 209,842 acres of land.   United Fruit immediately went on the defensive, hiring a public relations company to smear Jacobo Arbenz in the US media. He was framed as a communist, and in Cold War-era America, this generated fear and distrust against Arbenz.   John Foster Dulles, far right, was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of state from 1953-59. Source: Dutch National Archives   United Fruit’s governmental reach was not limited to Central America. In fact, at the time of Arbenz’s election, the company’s legal matters were represented by the US Secretary of State under Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, and his law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell. Dulles’ brother, Allen, was the director of the CIA and owned shares in United Fruit, previously serving on its board. The president’s private secretary was married to United Fruit’s public relations officer.  This broad, tangled reach was often compared to an octopus, earning the company the creature’s Spanish name, el pulpo, in its operation areas.   Members of the Castillo Armas junta. Armas is third from left. Source: World Wide Photos   While Arbenz had opened governmental participation to communists in Guatemala for the first time, he did not consider himself one. In a country of over three million, about 4,000 people were registered as communists in 1954. Regardless, with his extension of political freedoms and his land redistribution ideas being targeted by United Fruit propaganda, the US saw him as a threat to global democracy.   The CIA was authorized to lead an operation to overthrow Arbenz. Government players chose a Guatemalan, Carlos Castillo Armas, to lead the operation, and efforts to remove Arbenz began. Unaware of the American role in the coup, Arbenz reached out to his believed ally for help. Finding no support, he resigned and left Guatemala.   Armas took over as a military dictator, branded by the American media as the “liberator” of the people. Armas removed voting rights for many Guatemalans and reversed Arbenz’s land reforms, but he was friendly to United Fruits’ operations. By 1960, Guatemala was engulfed in a civil war that was characterized by abductions, murder, and mutilation over a 36-year period.   The Tentacles Maintain Their Hold Chiquita bananas in a photo by Alexander Pohl. Source: The Nation   Despite its controversial past, United Fruit is still thriving today, now operating under the Chiquita brand. Americans today consume about thirty pounds of bananas per capita per year and are far from the only country where the world’s most popular fruit reigns supreme.   Currently, Chiquita has fallen to number two in North America in terms of banana sales, behind Dole, though it remains number one in the European Union. It distributes fruit in more than 70 countries, with bananas generating about 44% of the company’s total revenue. Other than a brief scandal in the 70s, in which bribes to Honduran officials in exchange for reduced taxes were exposed in the media, United Fruit and its subsidiaries’ actions throughout history have largely gone unanswered. Profits above people and the land seem to be the focus of the company’s legacy.

  Whaling started as early as the 1650s in northeast US, predominantly in Nantucket. First, the whaling ships netted the “right whale” – these whales swam slowly and floated once killed. By the mid-1700s, Nantucket earned the title “Whaling Capital of the World.” With that title came immense wealth, transforming this island into one of the richest communities in the US.   Whale Oil. Source: Queensland Museum Blog   Nantucket dominated the whaling industry from the 1720s until the 1850s. Its whaling ships ventured far into the world’s oceans, seeking their quarry. Whale oil was a key ingredient during the Industrial Revolution, used as a machine lubricant in factories, for illumination as it burned cleanly, and many other products – its versatility made it highly valuable. Nantucket grew steadily, and at whaling’s 19th-century height, seventy-five out of 750 ships were Nantucket-based.    The Whaling Ship  Exhibit 19a. Source: BBC   The key to successful hunting was the type of ship. First, the whalers used sloops, being cheap to build and operate. But as whale numbers dropped, hunters began to hunt the very valuable sperm whale, which led ship owners to switch to larger square-mast brigs or sloops. These sturdy boats were designed to take a drubbing and sail into the cold Arctic to the Antarctic seas. Their crews followed a rigid ranking system, with the ship’s captain at the top.   When whales were sighted, the whaleship dropped whaleboats. These double-ended, tough longboats were about twenty-five feet long, powered by six rowers and a mate, and designed to chase the whales. At the prow stood the harpooner, the man who threw the first harpoon. Heavy coiled rope on the harpoon connected the whale to the whaleboat.    The harpooner also ensured nothing entangled in the rope as the whale fled, diving or pulling away. Thus, the aptly titled Nantucket Sleighride began.    Processing a whale. Source: New Bedford Whaling Museum   The Sleighride resulted from the desperate whale dragging the whaleboat along. Some species tended to be more dangerous – humpbacks gave the fastest rides while fin whales dove deep, trying to sink the whaleboat. But any wounded leviathan was dangerous. Speeds of over 20 mph were not uncommon. Some whales retaliated, like in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, about a great white sperm whale that sank whaling ships. Melville based his bestseller on Mocha Dick, a fierce white whale that lurked off the coast of Chile. The hardy sailors held on, watching the coiled harpoon rope feed out, waiting for exhaustion to set in. Upon the whale tiring out, the whaleboat crew rowed up to the leviathan to finish it off with long lances in vital organs.   Processing the Whale The Whale Beached between Scheveningen and Katwijk, with Elegant Sightseers, by Esaias van de Velde, 1617, Source: Wikimedia Commons   After killing the whale, the whaleboat towed the carcass back for processing at the whaling ship. The entire whale was sliced up. Whaling ships carried brick ovens to aid the refining, storing the whale oil in wooden caskets. Nothing went to waste, from the blubber rendered into the prized oil, baleen for umbrellas and corsets, meat and bones for jewelry, or chess pieces.   Sperm whales became the most hunted and valued whale. Oil from the sperm whale’s head, called spermaceti, proved even more valuable. This waxy oil went into making candles and high-grade lubricants. Retrieving the oil meant a crewmember climbed into the skull to scoop it out. Ambergris, an intestinal secretion in sperm whales, also called “floating gold,” was worth its weight in gold. Sought for the perfume manufacturing, this enabled the perfume’s scent to last much longer. Finally, breaking down a whale into its component parts could take a day or more.    And woe to any sailor who fell overboard into the messy water; sharks often prowled around whaling ships, homing in on the whale carcass’s blood.    Risks and Rewards Whale ship deck plan. Source: Cool Antarctica   Whaling entailed its risks, which took mental and physical tolls. As time went on, American whaling ships traveled further afield, looking for new whale populations to exploit. Voyages could last up to several years, leading to isolation. Diseases such as scurvy and dysentery cropped up, aided by poor diets and bad health.    The Nantucket Sleighride was no easy feat for the sailors. Aside from being dragged along, the whaleboats could be pulled under or capsized. The whale’s powerful thrashing tail could strike sailors. Despite the risks, the immense rewards kept the whaleships returning, powering a nation. The whaling industry declined after 1865 as whale oil was replaced by kerosene, lard oil, and petroleum-based chemicals. Thus, the Nantucket sleighride represented the height and skill of the whaling era as tough men risked life and limb to obtain valuable whale oil.

  On December 8, 1941, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a speech that immortalized the previous day as a “day that will live in infamy.” Japanese planes had attacked the US military installation in Hawaii in a surprise onslaught that resulted in over 2,400 deaths and an abundance of damage. The Japanese goal of keeping the US out of the Pacific was unsuccessful, as the US declared war on the attackers after FDR’s speech. The horrors that took place at Pearl Harbor cemented US involvement in World War II and forever shaped modern warfare.   1. The First American Shots of WWII Were Fired Before the Attack A ship burns during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Source: National Archives   Early on the morning of the attack, US military personnel encountered a surprise: a Japanese midget submarine nosing its way into the harbor. The submarine’s periscope was detected by a minesweeper called the Condor. The Condor alerted the closest destroyer, the USS Ward, and the Ward attacked, firing shots at the sub until it sank.   Little did they know that the submarine was just the first of hundreds of Japanese invaders that would be descending upon Pearl Harbor that morning. Surprisingly, this event didn’t instantly put military forces on alert. Navy officials did not believe the Ward’s reports, and it would be 60 years until the sinking of the submarine was officially recognized.   The initial report was attributed to “war nerves” and brushed aside. In 2022, the wreckage of the submarine was located, and it was confirmed that it had been sunk in accordance with the story provided by the crew of the Ward. The shots that sank the Japanese sub were, though it was unknown at the time, the first fired by American forces in World War II.   2. The Attack Impacted Some Families Especially Dramatically A man holding the Honolulu Star-Bulletin from the evening of December 7th, 1941, in a 1975 photograph by Martin Brown. Source: National Archives   In December 1941, there were 38 sets of brothers and one father and son pair serving on the USS Arizona, one of the ships that was sunk in the Pearl Harbor attack. Allowing siblings to serve together was fairly common at the time and was thought to boost morale. After the attack, in which 1,177 of the 1,514 men aboard the Arizona perished, the military began to rethink allowing family members to serve together.   Twenty-three of the 38 sets of brothers were lost, and three sets were left with just one survivor. Father and son Thomas and William Free both perished in the attack. Though no official decree was ever put forth, the Navy released a bulletin discouraging family members from serving together.   The bulletin did little to prevent siblings from wanting to be together. After Pearl Harbor, five brothers from the Sullivan family of Waterloo, Iowa enlisted in the Navy. All five were killed in 1942 when the USS Juneau was torpedoed. This warning is still given today, though families are not permitted to serve in a hostile area together.   3. The Attack Was Inspired by a Fictional Book Isoruko Yamamoto in 1942. Source: National Museum of Taiwan History   In 1925, Hector Bywater, a British naval officer, published The Great Pacific War, a fictional novel that described a conflict that would eventually come to fruition. The author speculated about a conflict between Japan and the United States and described several events that would actually take place, including a surprise attack on the United States and the “island hopping” strategy that US forces would later use in the Pacific to strike against Japan.   The novel was popular throughout the 1920s and 30s. It was read by Marshal Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s combined fleet, who even met with the author several times while working as a naval attaché overseas. The Great Pacific War was translated into Japanese and was required reading for Japanese Navy Officers. While the book probably didn’t cause the attack, the details within likely inspired some of the planning behind the attack.   4. Today, USS Arizona Survivors Can Choose to Be Interred With Their Fallen Brethren The wreckage of the USS Arizona sits in the harbor just after the attack. Source: Library of Congress   The USS Arizona held the brunt of the casualties from the Pearl Harbor attack, with only 334 survivors. Many of those who perished now lay with the ship eternally, unable to be recovered. While all Pearl Harbor survivors have the option to have their ashes scattered across the bay upon their passing, survivors of the Arizona have the unique opportunity to join their fallen shipmates.   After their deaths, these individuals may choose to have their urns interred in the well of barbette number four upon the Arizona by divers. A barbette is a fixed armored enclosure to protect the ship’s guns, making this a suitable, protected place for eternal rest. Services for these individuals are held on the USS Arizona memorial and include a committal, rifle salute, TAPS, and a flag and plaque presentation to the family along with the actual internment. As of 2020, 44 survivors have chosen this route.   5. Doris Miller Became the First African American to Be Awarded the Navy Cross   Doris “Dorie” Miller was the son of Texas sharecroppers who enlisted in the US Navy just shy of his twentieth birthday. The Navy was not desegregated until 1946, and as a result, many African American enlistees like Dorie were relegated to labor jobs. Miller was assigned to the USS West Virginia as a messman, and the ship headed to Pearl Harbor to shore up the Pacific Fleet not long after.   Doris Miller wearing his Navy Cross in 1942. Source: National Archives   When the Pearl Harbor attack began, Miller was gathering laundry. He ran to the deck, where he found his commanding officer, who had been grievously wounded. He carried his captain to safety, then headed to the gun deck, which stood empty. Dorie had never received any formal training on the anti-aircraft guns, as was typical for Black sailors at the time. Regardless, he opened fire on the Japanese planes until the guns ran out of ammunition.   Afterward, he helped evacuate his comrades and was one of the last three men to leave the ship as it sank. Some accounts claim that Dorie downed two to five planes, but the actual number has never been verified. It wasn’t until the following March that Dorie would be formally recognized by the military or government, though rumors about an unidentified Black sailor’s heroics at Pearl Harbor swirled.   Dorie Miller became the first African American man to receive the Navy Cross, awarded in recognition of extraordinary heroism while engaged in action against an enemy. In terms of military decoration, it is second only to the Medal of Honor.   Miller continued to serve in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, moving to the carrier USS Liscome Bay. In November 1943, the ship was hit by a torpedo. In the assault, the bomb magazine exploded, and most of the sailors on board were killed. Miller, 24, was assumed dead. After one year and failure to recover his body, he was declared Killed in Action.   Since his death, the US Navy has named a dining hall, barracks, and a destroyer, the USS Miller, for Dorie. In addition, his hometown of Waco, Texas has numerous homages to him, including a park, and several other states have honored his legacy with dedications.   6. Many of the Damaged Battleships Returned to Duty Salvage work on the Oklahoma in 1943. Source: National Archives   As America prepared to dive headlong into World War II, it was imperative that the wreckage of Pearl Harbor be salvaged, if possible, and put to use immediately. The Pearl Harbor Navy Yard bustled with repair work. Some of the ships could be repaired right there, while others had to be ferried to the mainland United States for more extensive repairs.   All but two of the ships, the Arizona and the Utah, were able to be salvaged. All of the saved ships were returned to service with the exception of the Oklahoma. While some items and materials were recovered from the sunken ships and able to be repurposed, the majority of the Arizona and Utah remain in Pearl Harbor today. Four of the formerly sunken ships, the California, Nevada, West Virginia, and the Oglala, a minelayer, were returned to active duty and used in combat against Japan during World War II. In all, the salvage operations took about two years.   7. The Americans Captured the First Japanese POW A Japanese sub similar to the one piloted by Kazuo Sakamaki salvaged after the attack. Source: US Naval History and Heritage Command   The first Japanese Prisoner of War captured by American forces in World War II would be detained at Pearl Harbor. Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki and his companion, Chief Warrant Officer Kiyoshi Inagaki, were in a submarine moving towards the harbor to attack when the sub began experiencing mechanical issues. The ship began turning in circles and struck a coral reef three times. It ran aground just after the first wave of Japanese bombers struck. It was spotted and targeted with gunfire by an American destroyer, the Helm.   Though the Helm didn’t sink the sub, it was damaged enough that Sakamaki gave the order to his companion to abandon ship. Inagaki would drown in their attempted escape, and Sakamaki reached the beach but fell unconscious. He was retrieved by American officers, questioned, and sent to a POW camp on the mainland. After the war, Sakamaki wrote his memoirs and became a businessman, working for Toyota in Brazil and Japan.   8. The USS Arizona Still Leaks Fuel Daily Oil seepage from the USS Arizona, photographed in 2005 by JG Howes. Source: Wikimedia Commons   Over 80 years after the attack, oil continues to leak from the sunken hull of the USS Arizona daily. An estimated nine quarts of oil escapes the ship each day, and the National Park Service estimates that the leak has the potential to continue for approximately 500 more years.   9. A Baby Girl is Entombed in the Wreckage of the Utah A view of the USS Utah Memorial in 1981. Source: National Archives   Chief Yeoman Albert Wagner was assigned aboard the USS Utah when it was attacked by the Japanese. Though he survived the bombing, the ashes of his baby daughter, Nancy, which were locked in his quarters, were forever lost within the wreckage of the ship, one of the two battleships that were unable to be revived from the ocean floor.   His daughter and her twin had been born prematurely, and unfortunately, baby Nancy did not survive. Her sister was in the hospital for four months before finally going home with her parents. Wagner had planned to spread his daughter’s ashes at sea with the help of the ship’s chaplain but had not yet had the chance. Twin sister Mary Dianne said that she feels “nothing but pride and pleasure” that her sister is among “magnificent company” as those who heroically lost their lives in the attack.   10. Elvis Presley Helped Fundraise for the USS Arizona Memorial Elvis received an award from the Pacific War Memorial Commission in 1961 in gratitude for his efforts in relation to the Arizona Memorial. Source: World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument   In the 1950s, plans were underway to create a Pearl Harbor memorial over the site of the sunken USS Arizona. However, fundraising efforts stalled out by 1960, with less than half the funds raised. Elvis Presley, who had just been discharged from the army the year before, stepped in to help. On March 26, 1961, the singer performed a benefit concert to a crowd of 4,000. The concert, a private donation from Presley, and the attention brought to the donation fund by his efforts were enough to get the memorial under construction. It was completed in May 1962.