“Pages of history” features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Evening Journal.
March 6, 1946, Wilmington Morning News
Churchill urges U.S.-British military pact; charges Russia is menace to world peace
Winston Churchill called for a virtual Anglo-American military alliance yesterday with a blunt warning against what he termed Russia’s desire for “indefinite expansion” of its “power and doctrines.”
“A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory,” the former British Prime Minister declared in an address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri during a joint appearance with President Harry Truman.
“Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intend to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselyting tendencies,” Churchill said.
Britain’s wartime leader gravely declared that prevention of another great war “can only be achieved by reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia under the general authority of the United Nations Organization.”…
“From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than military weakness,” he said….
RUSSIA ATTACKS UKRAINE:As Ukrainians in Delaware watch invasion, there is ‘nothing to do but cry and pray’
March 6, 1981, Evening Journal
End of an era; Walter Cronkite will say his last ‘that’s the way it is’
After tonight, the world will be a little bit different. No longer will Walter Cronkite be around to assure us – as he has done for the past 19 years – “that’s the way it is” as he closes the nightly CBS Evening News.
At the end of tonight’s newscast, Cronkite is putting himself out to pasture. He’s leaving the anchorman post to follow less strenuous pursuits at CBS News, including hosting its prime-time science series, “Universe,” this summer.
Here is a man who has become a father figure for an entire nation, whose recounting of each day’s events has come to be seen as the way things actually took place, whose perceived image as the country’s most trusted man has been carefully guarded.
Cronkite’s reputation for putting the chaos of the world in electronic perspective, thus reassuring viewers that there will be a tomorrow, was earned in November 1963. In shirtsleeves, he appeared on the nation’s television screens the afternoon of Nov. 22 to tell us President John F. Kennedy had been shot by an assassin. Over the next several days, with dignity and sensitivity, Cronkite guided his network’s coverage of the aftermath and mourning.
Because of that exemplary performance, a generation of Americans came to accept him as a member of the family, the trusted uncle who could be counted on in times of stress….
March 8, 1965, Wilmington Morning News
Clubs, gas batter praying Negroes; Alabama marchers beaten
Selma, Alabama – State troopers and mounted deputies, charging behind a barrage of tear gas, attacked 600 Negro marchers with clubs yesterday and drove them bleeding and screaming through the streets of Selma.
Troopers and posse men, under orders from Gov. George C. Wallace to stop the Negro “walk for freedom” to Montgomery, attacked the Negroes as they knelt to pray on a bridge at the edge of the business district.
Deputies on horseback chased the choking, bloody Negroes nearly a mile, clubbing them as they ran. At least 67 persons were wounded and scores left gasping by tear gas.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., persuaded by his aides not to lead yesterday’s ill-fated march, announced in Atlanta that he would lead a “renewed” march from Selma to Montgomery Tuesday, “in spite of the dangers.”
Among the injured was John Lewis, chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee….
At a mass meeting last night, one of Dr. King’s aides told 600 Negroes, many wrapped in bandages, that “if we stop now, we go back to yesterday, but yesterday is too miserable to live. We can’t go back now.”
CATCH UP ON HISTORY:The News Journal archives, week of Jan. 30
March 12, 2011, The News Journal
Earthquake, tsunami kill hundreds, ravage Japan
Japan launched a massive, military-led rescue operation today after a giant earthquake and tsunami killed hundreds of people and turned the northeastern coast into a swampy wasteland as authorities braced for a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he is sending 50,000 troops for the rescue and recovery efforts following Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake that unleashed one of the greatest disasters Japan has witnessed – a 23-foot tsunami that washed far inland over fields, smashing towns, airports and highways.
The official death toll stood at 413, while 784 people were missing and 1,128 injured….
Adding to the worries was the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where two reactors had lost cooling ability….
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
