Alfred Nobel Quotes
The first time I saw nitroglycerine was in the beginning of the Crimean War. Professor Zinin in St. Petersburg exhibited some to my father and me, and struck some on an anvil to show that only the part touched by the hammer exploded without spreading.
Fant, Kenne. Alfred Nobel: A Biography. Arcade Publishing, 1993, p. 39.
After the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson drafted the Declaration of War that President Roosevelt would ask Congress to vote for. However, there was a small but very vocal group of extreme Republican conservatives who opposed assisting England against Hitler and saw German and Italian Fascism as positive forces. They would oppose any administration declaration of war against Germany and Italy who had not yet attacked any American facilities. The President realized that German and Italy had a Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan, and when we declared war against Japan, would have to ally with Japan or reneg on their treaty. So FDR removed Germany and Italy from the Declaration and Congress just declared war against Germany. In the next days, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the de facto situation was as Stimson had drafted it, but FDR had not given the right wing American Fascist sympathizers any issue to criticize the administration.
South America, invaded and colonized by Spain was a brutal combination of slavery and repression. Even the European colonists suffered under the terrible combination of exploitation, militarism and religious dictatorship. Independence from Spain was equally bloody as unlike in North America where the fight was against British rule, in South America the black slaves, the indigenous Indians and the white colonists all had scores to settle with the Spanish rulers. And the Spanish in turn realized that and brutally repressed all rebellion attempts. Atrocities were common, and committed by almost all, including even idealists like Bolivar.
The Spanish Civil War was in retrospect the first battle of WWII. Hitler, contemplating a European takeover, provided the Franco Fascist’s with German Air Support, using aerial bombing, not to destroy military targets but to terrorize civilian population centers. The successful tactic was used by the Germans against Warsaw, Amsterdam, London and many other cities.
1776 at the Battle of Bunker Hill This was the first formal battle of the American Revolution. The British officers perceived the American colonials as a rag-tag collection of men with no experience or skill at arms. Looking for glory they led from the front and if nothing else the Colonials were superb marksmen who picked the officers off easily. After that battle, British officers were more prudent and respectful of the revolutionaries.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist. He held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous. He owned Bofors, which he redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments. Having read a premature obituary which condemned him for profiting from the sales of arms, he bequeathed his fortune to the Nobel Prize institution. The synthetic element nobelium was named after him in the second half of the 20th century. His name also survives in companies such as Dynamit Nobel and AkzoNobel, which are descendants of mergers with companies that Nobel established.
