Eagled-eyed observers will notice that something is missing from this picture on the cover of the April 1950 issue of Popular Science. That’s right. This Studebaker is missing the clutch pedal, and the magazine features an expose of those newfangled automatic transmissions.
In 1945, the U.S. Army had ben using as much as 235,000 miles of wire per month for communications. Despite the role of radio, it was often advisable to use telephone communications. Among other things, radio might disclose positions to the enemy.
There was the matter of laying all that wire, and one method is shown here, on the cover of Popular Mechanics, April 1945. A “grasshopper” plane was fitted so that it could skim the ground and 200-250 feet. At one end, probably closest to the front, it would drop a parachute bearing a telephone unit, attached to the wire. The wire was wound binder twine fashion, to play out without tangling, and with minimal resistance. Rolls were 1-1/2 miles long, and three to five miles of wire could be layed in a flight at 65-70 miles per hour.
By this method, patrols cut off from communications could be swiftly reached.
Eighty years ago today, April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, and Vice President Harry S Truman assumed the office. This photo of his being sworn in appeared in the April 23, 1945, issue of Life Magazine.
At 5:15, Truman was summoned to the White House and was shown to Mrs. Roosevelt’s study, where she informed him that the President was dead. He asked, “what can I do,” to which she replied, “tell us what we can do.” At 7:10, Chief Justice Stone administered the oath. Truman slept that night at his own apartment, and the next morning, set up his office, from which Roosevelt’s effects had already been removed.
At noon, Truman greeted a group of reporters with tears in his eyes, saying, “last night the whole weight of the moon and stars fell on me. If you fellows ever pray, please pray for me.”
A hundred years ago this month, the cover of the April 1925 issue of Popular Mechanics shows author Lewis R. Freeman and his companions at the controls of a four-tube radio set during an expedition to the Canadian Rockies. In 1923, he had taken a radio to the Grand Canyon and successfully pulled in stations, despite assurances by so-called experts that reception would be impossible. Emboldened, he was asked to join the Canadian expedition, and brought along the four-pound radio. Batteries and other accessories added forty pounds.
The first night’s listening pulled in Oklahoma City, followed by Calgary, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles, before it even got dark. Freeman reported that during the course of the expedition, a majority of the high power stations east of the Mississippi were heard, along with stations as far south as Baton Rouge, and practically everything in the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, and Alberta.
Shown here are Ed Parsons, W7FKZ, and his wife Grace. Parsons was the owner of KAST in Astoria, Oregon. It was Mrs. Parsons who came up with the idea of having television, and she knew that if anyone could do it, it was Parsons. In addition to running the station, Parsons was the go-to man for the town’s fishing boats when they needed electronic equipment repaired.
The problem was that Astoria was 140 miles away from the closest TV station, KRSC (later KING-TV), channel 5, in Seattle. Complicating the problem were mountains along the path. Parsons took up the challenge, and drove every inch of the city, and discovered that there were fingerlike bands where a signal was making it. One of those bands included his penthouse apartment, and he set up shop there. While his wife watched the set for a signal, he adjusted the antenna, communicating by telephone.
Eventually, he had success, and his house had constant visitors. Eventually, he set up a rudimentary Cable TV system, retransmitting the signal on channel 2 into a coaxial cable, which could be run up to 2000 feet. Within this radius were a number of businesses who had sets running in their shop windows.
This story appeared in the April 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics. A more in-depth biography of Parsons can be found at this link.
Eighty-five years ago, on April 8-9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. This was of particular concern to the United States, since the war was now creeping closer to America, since the Danish colony of Greenland was geographically part of North America. A year later, Greenland became a de facto protectorate of the United States, and when America entered the war, Greenland became a combatant.
President Roosevelt suggested that it would be “a good thing for the American people to learn a great deal about Greenland.” According to Life Magazine, April 22, 1940, from which suggested that most Americans’ only knowledge was the hymn beginning “from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strands.” The magazine also reminded readers that during the last war, the U.S. bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark to keep them from falling into hostile hands.
While orders came to Greenland from Copenhagen, via radio and via neutral Portugal, these orders were ignored. Instead, local officials came to taking orders from the Danish Ambassador to the U.S., Henrik Kauffmann, who became nicknamed as the “King of Greenland.” He was charged by the Danish government with treason, but the sentence was revoked after liberation in 1945.
That issue of Life devoted fifteen pages to the expansion of the War to the Nordic Countries. Shown above is an Inuit Greenland girl flirting with two Danes. The magazine noted that the Inuit had a good deal of white blood, and the Danes have no objection at all to marrying them, since there were “considered more useful wives in this hard climate than the thin-blooded white women. They are extremely courteous, for Greenlanders know they must get along with one another to survive at all.”
On April 2, 2025, Britain joined other European countries in issuing guidance to the public to prepare for emergencies. According to press accounts, flooding was the most common risk, but other emergencies could be pandemic, cyberattacks that cut off the internet, or a nuclear war in Europe.
And Germany, in addition to encouraging citizens to stock up on needed goods, is calling for schools to provide civil defense training to prepare students for war scenarios.
The UK list of recommended supplies includes the following items: (The links are to previous posts on this site discussing them in more detail, or to inexpensive items available at Amazon.)
Most of our readers are ahead of the curve, and are prepared in excess of these bare minimums. But even so, it doesn’t hurt to look through a list like this, and make sure you have these items available at home, at work, in your car, at school, or wherever you might find yourself when disaster strikes. And, of course, not all of your neighbors are prepared, and it might be helpful to nudge them in the right direction by pointing out that mainstream media in countries throughout Europe are now encouraging basic preparations. You can click here for all of our posts on the subject of emergency preparedness.
We hope there won’t be a war. But it doesn’t hurt to take at least some minimal preparations to help you should there be one, or even a more mundane emergency.
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101 years ago, this duo were camped out in the great outdoors. After a day of adventures, they were able to tune in some music, or perhaps listen to the news of the world, thanks to the foresight of bringing along a radio. And for the 1925 season, the April 1925 issue of Radio Age showed how to build the set.
The author began poetically by quoting a portion of The Call of The Wild by Robert W. Service:
Have you seen God in His splendors,
Heard the text that nature renders?
(You’ll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things,
The silent men who do things –
Then listen to the Wild –
It’s calling you.
And the best way to pull in the call of the wild is with a three-tube TRF set, as described in the article. The set was said to pull in DX, and the next step up would be a much more complex superheterodyne. This set was a moderate priced, good, substantial receiver, in a compact case containing batteries and loudspeaker.
Setting it up was simple. Just find a tree 50 feet away from the desired location, get the end of the antenna up as high as possible, and run it to the set. A tent pole would serve as a suitable mast for that end of the wire.
For modern campers, we recommend a small portable such as the one shown here. Like everything, it’s available inexpensively at Amazon. In addition to AM and FM broadcasts, it will pull in the shortwaves, meaning that almost anywhere you find yourself in the world, you’ll find something to listen to. And if you’re in North America, you’ll be able to get NOAA weather broadcasts. It’s powered by AAA batteries, but you can also run it from the built-in hand crank or solar panel. You can even use it to charge your phone or other USB device, and it has a built-in flashlight and siren. And you can even pull in the Call of The Wild.
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About the cheapest way to stockpile an emergency supply of food is to get mostly rice and beans, because they will supply most of your nutritional needs at an extremely low cost. (See our earlier posts–this one, and this one, for more information.) But that diet would be lacking in some essential vitamins.
According to the book Nuclear War Survival Skills, the first vitamin deficiency that will inflict persons living on an austere diet of rice and beans will be scurvy, due to the lack of any vitamin C (ascorbic acid). The first symptoms might appear within a month.
Fortunately, this particular effect of a famine is extremely easy and inexpensive to prevent.
The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C is 90 mg/day for men, and 75 mg/day for women. (However, these doses are probably more than necessary, since about 10 mg per day will probably prevent scurvy.) This dose would be extremely inexpensive to stockpile a supply for many years. For example, this bottle on Amazon contains 110 tablets of 500 mg. In other words, one pill could be crushed up to meet the RDA for a family of five, with some to spare. Just three bottles would last a family of five an entire year. This site recommends doing exactly that–grinding up one 500 mg pill and adding it to a drink, which will meet the RDA of the entire family.
Even more economical would be this jar of vitamin C powder. It contains about 226,000 mg (226 grams) of vitamin C (a quarter teaspoon contains 1250 mg). That means that it contains about 2500 servings of the RDA–it would be enough to last one person almost seven years.
Of course another option would be to store multivitamin tablets. In many ways, that is a better option, since this would assure you of a supply of other vitamins, in addition to vitamin C. The cost is somewhat higher, but still reasonable. But the cost of vitamin C is practically zero, and it is the vitamin that you would need before any other.
We think that given the low cost, stockpiling vitamin C would be prudent for everyone. But we also realize that not everyone will be doing it. Fortunately, even if you find yourself in a food crisis unprepared, the vitamin C problem is easily solved.
If you had to forage for all of your food, it’s quite likely that you would starve to death: You simply can’t get enough calories to keep yourself alive over the long term. However, almost anywhere you live, it is quite possible to have vitamin C in abundance simply by foraging.
Your best source of vitamin C will vary depending on where you live. But for me, I have three abundant sources: dandelions, creeping charlie, and pine needles. Any of these will give an abundant supply of vitamin C. There is zero possibility that my cause of death will be scurvy.
Dandelions.
The dandelion (taraxacum) is edible in its entirety, and is an excellent source of vitamin C. The leaves are the easiest part to eat, and you can find good instructions on doing so at this link.
The roots (not unlike the root of a potato, but on a much smaller scale) might actually provide a few calories for your trouble. But just by consuming the leaves, you’ll get all of the vitamin C that you need. They can simply be included in a salad, as you would lettuce. Or, you can just eat them as they are. The veins of the leaf, especially if they are mature, can be quite bitter tasting. But if you simply remove this part by cutting out the middle, you can just put a leaf in your mouth and eat it. According to WebMD, a cup of dandelion greens contains 19.2 mg of vitamin C. So just half a cup would provide the bare minimum necessary to prevent scurvy.
Creeping Charlie.
Creeping Charlie (Glechoma hederacea) is considered by many to be a weed, but it is found in many a suburban yard. All parts of the plant are edible, and it has a minty flavor. Again, you can simply eat the leaves, but a good way to consume it is as a tea. You can find instructions at this site. Basically, you just put the washed plant material in a jar, fill it with boiling water, and wait an hour. You can drink the tea either hot or cold.
I’ve been unable to find the exact dose of vitamin C, but creeping charlie is said to be high in the vitamin, and it seems likely that drinking the tea on a regular basis will fend off scurvy.
Pine Needles
The needles of many (but not all) pine trees are a good source of vitamin C. In particular, the white pine is an excellent source, and the needles can easily be made into a tea. You can find instructions here, but the recipe is very simple. Just add the needles to water and bring it to a boil. Then, let it steep for 10-20 minutes and strain.
In the winter of 1536, explorer Jacques Cartier and his men were suffering the effects of a disease unknown to them, scurvy. Thanks to the Iroquois,pi the made a miraculous recovery after being given pine needle tea.
Sprouting Seeds
If you have beans stored as part of your emergency food storage, then another alternative to obtain vitamin C in a food emergency is to sprout them. Even though the bean does not contain vitamin C, the sprouts do contain this essential vitamin. The process for sprouting them is easy, and you can find complete instructions in Chapter 9 of Nuclear War Survival Skills.
In a food emergency, foraging for food is unlikely to satisfy many of your needs. But it will easily provide you with one necessary nutrient, vitamin C. But still, the cost of buying the vitamin before the emergency is so low that it’s the obvious choice. But if faced with an emergency where you failed to prepare, remember that this particular deficiency is fairly easy to solve.
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For a look at 1978 grocery prices, this ad appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on April 5, 1978. The prices might look low, there has been a lot of inflation since 1978. According to this online calculator, one dollar in 1978 works out to $4.89 in 2025 dollars.
This means that the ten-pound bag of potatoes for 98 cents is about $4.79 in today’s money. And the quart of Miracle Whip for 59 cents would be about $2.89. A pound of bacon for $1.29 would be $6.30. If you want to compare prices, these links take you to the current listing on Amazon for the same product.
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