Category Archives: History

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

The podcast 99% Invisible had a story about weather control. That story inspired the following.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Weather control is an attractive idea. Warmth when we want it; rain when we need it. Light wind? Sure. No snow? Why not.

The 19th century’s Industrial Revolution led many to believe that if we could control and increase production so efficiently, why can’t we control nature, too? Beyond the ceremonial rain dance. Beyond prayer and sacrifices to the gods.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Civil War impetus

During the American Civil War, some thought that its large battles had affected the weather and the idea of shooting cannons, setting off fireworks, exploding hydrogen balloons might cause rain.

The US Department of Agriculture experimented with this idea in Texas in the 1890s. It worked since it rained, but some suggested that it rained because it was the rainy season in Texas anyway.

Sporadic attempts continued with no actual success.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Weather Race

Like the impact of the Industrial Revolution, the development of the atomic bomb again led us to feel we had conquered the unconquerable and renewed the idea of weather control.

So before the so-called Space Race of the 1960s, the US joined the Weather Race. Communism had arrived and the Cold War was around the corner.

Of course, the race wasn’t just for a gold medal to the winner of weather control. The military advantages were immense.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Irving Langmuir

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

In July 1946, Irving Langmuir, the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awardee, and his assistant Vincent Schaefer discovered that moisture that normally stayed  vaporous below freezing, would turn into ice crystals when they super-cooled it with dry ice.

And on November 13 of that year at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York Langmuir, and Bernard Vonnegut discovered that silver iodide could be used with dry ice as a nucleating agent to seed clouds.

Seeding clouds involved inserting large quantities of a nucleating agent into clouds to facilitate the formation of ice crystals. The intent of this process was to cause the clouds to produce rain or snow.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Dr. Felix Hoenikker

Side note: Langmuir was the inspiration for Bernard’s brother Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional scientist Dr. Felix Hoenikker in the novel Cat’s Cradle.  The character’s invention of ice-nine eventually destroyed the world. Kurt had briefly worked at GE as well.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

GE out; Langmuir still in

While GE was initially interested in the science of weather control, the worry that chemically-induced snow storms causing damage and the likelihood of subsequent litigation persuaded them to curtail such research.

December 11, 1950 Charleston Daily Mail (Charleston, WV) ran a short article about Langmuir:

“Rainmaking” or weather control can be as powerful a war weapon as the atom bomb, a Nobel prize winning physicist said today.

Dr. Irving Langmuir, pioneer in “rainmaking,” said the government should seize on the phenomenon of weather control as it did on atomic energy when Albert Einstein told the late President Roosevelt in 1939 of the potential power of an atom-splitting weapon.

“In the amount of energy liberated, the effect of 30 milligrams of silver iodide under optimum conditions equals that of one atomic bomb,” Langmuir said.

While further experimentation continued—Langmuir was particularly interested in neutering hurricanes (Project Cirrus in 1952)—none proved effective and critics pointed out that they could explain any proffered “proofs” with more logical and meteorological explanations.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

President’s Advisory Committee on Weather Control

In August of 1953 the United States formed the President’s Advisory Committee on Weather Control. Its stated purpose was to determine the effectiveness of weather modification procedures and the extent to which the government should engage in such activities. Captain Howard T Orville chaired the committee.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

The May 28, 1954 cover of Collier’s magazine showed a man quite literally changing the seasons by a system of levers and push buttons. Orville wrote the article. In it he said, “if investigation of weather control receives the public support and funds for research which its importance merits, we may be able eventually to make weather almost to order.

The July 6, 1954 edition of Minnesota’s Brainerd Daily Dispatch said:

It may someday be possible to cause torrents of rain over Russia by seeding clouds moving toward the Soviet Union.

Or it may be possible — if an opposite effect is desired — to cause destructive droughts which dry up food crops by “overseeding” those same clouds.

And fortunately for the United States, Russia could do little to retaliate because most weather moves from west to east.”

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Project Stormfury

Despite the lack of concrete observable results, interest continued. Project Stormfury began in 1956 and continued the attempt to control or mollify severe weather.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Captain Howard T Orville

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

In a January 1, 1958, article in the Pasadena Star-News Captain Orville warned that “if an unfriendly nation solves the problem of weather control and gets into the position to control the large-scale weather patterns before we can, the results could be even more disastrous than nuclear warfare.”

The May 25, 1958, issue of The American Weekly ran an article by Frances Leighton using information from Captain Howard T. Orville. Leighton wrote,

“Behind the scenes, while statesmen argue policies and engineers build space satellites, other men are working day and night. They are quiet men, so little known to the public that the magnitude of their job, when you first hear of it, staggers the imagination. Their object is to control the weather and change the face of the world.

Some of these men are Americans. Others are Russians. The first skirmishes of an undeclared cold war between them already have been fought. Unless a peace is achieved the war’s end will determine whether Russia or the United States rules the earth’s thermometers.”

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Kennedy’s Weather Race

September 25, 1961: President Kennedy spoke at the UN.  Among his various points, he stated: We shall propose further cooperative efforts between all nations in weather prediction and eventually in weather control. (text of entire speech)

Less than a year later, on May 27, 1962, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson presented the graduation address at his alma mater, Southwest Texas State University (today Texas State University) in San Marcos.

Among various points, Johnson spoke about weather control and stated that, “..to control the weather and ultimately he who controls the weather controls the world.”

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Committee on Atmospheric Science

In November 1963, the Committee on Atmospheric Science appointed a Panel on Weather and Climate Modification “to undertake a deliberate and thoughtful review of the present status of activities in this field.” 

The Committee issued its report in October 1964. In it the Committee stated that, “We conclude that the initiation of large-scale operational weather modification programs would be premature. Many fundamental problems must be answered first….We believe that the patient investigation of atmospheric processes coupled with an exploration of the technical applications may eventually lead to useful weather modification, but we emphasize that the time-scale required for success may be measured in decades.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Project Popeye

Despite such pessimism, Project Popeye happened nonetheless. Due to the weak science and questionable results, the military kept the project secret.

August 10, 1966:  the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed a weather modification program for selected areas of Laos. The Command of US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (COMUSMACV) and the Commander in Chief of US Pacific Command (CINCPAC) concurred. (see Global Security dot com for more)

September 1, 1966:  the Joint Chiefs of Staff granted approval of the project and issued  the execute order on September 17, 1966.

September 29 1966 — October 28 1966: the US military began Project Popeye in a strip of the Laos panhandle east of the Bolovens Plateau in the Se Kong River valley. Naval personnel eventually conducted 50 seeding cloud experiments. Project leaders claimed that 82% of the clouds produced rain within a brief period after having been seeded and that one of the clouds drifted across the Vietnam border and dropped nine inches of rain on a US special forces camp over a four hour period.

They declared the project a success and on January 13, 1967 a “Memorandum From the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Kohler) to Secretary of State Rusk” Its proposal stated, ” The Department of Defense has requested our approval to initiate the operational phase of Project …. The objective of the program is to produce sufficient rainfall along these lines of communication to interdict or at least interfere with truck traffic between North and South Vietnam. Recently improved cloud seeding techniques would be applied on a sustained basis, in a non-publicized effort to induce continued rainfall through the months of the normal dry season.” (entire text of proposal

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Operation Popeye-Make Mud, Not War

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

March 20, 1967: a highly classified weather modification program in Southeast Asia called Operation Popeye began. It was an attempt to extend the monsoon season, specifically over areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail maze. The military seeded the clouds over the Trail to create floods and wash out supply routes to hinder North Vietnam’s supply chain into and from South Vietnam.

The 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron carried out the operation using the slogan “make mud, not war.”

 The initial area of operations was the eastern half of the Laotian panhandle. 

At times the program was also known as Operation Motorpool, and Operation Intermediary-Compatriot.  (V, see Mar 25; OP, see July 11)

July 11, 1967:  the Operation’s operational area was increased northward to around the area of the 20th parallel and included portions of far western North Vietnam.

September 25, 1968:  the southern region of North Vietnam was added to the operational area                          

November 1, 1968:  the southern region of North Vietnam was removed from the Operation concurrent with a halt to conventional bombing of North Vietnam.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Leaks

In 1971, leaks about the program began to appear in the press and in September 1971, Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island as
chairman of the Subcommittee on Oceans and the International Environment requested the Department of Defense to provide information with respect to the program. 

April 18, 1972: regarding any US program to affect the weather/rainfall in Vietnam, Nixon’s secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird testified at a Senate that, “we have never engaged in that type of activity over Northern Vietnam.”

July 3, 1972: a NY Times article on Operation Popeye appeared. It’s lead paragraph stated that “The United States has been secretly seeding clouds over North Vietnam, Laos and South Viet nam to increase and control the rainfall for military purposes.” 

That same day, another NY Times article quoted Dr. Matthew Meseison, a professor of biology at Harvard University, from the June 16 issue of the magazine Science:

“It is obvious that weather modification used as a weapon of war has the potential for causing large‐scale and quite possibly uncontrollable and unpredictable destruction. Furthermore, such destruction might well have a far greater impact on civilians than on combatants. This would be especially true in areas where subsistence agriculture is practiced, in food‐deficit areas, and in areas subject to flooding.”

Also on the same day, a third NYT article stated: Two former high‐ranking officials of the Johnson Administration said…that Robert S. McNamara, while Secretary of Defense, specifically ordered the Air Force to stop all rainmaking late in 1967….

But other officials, who served in both the Johnson and Nixon Administrations, said they recalled no such clear‐cut order.

It was not clear whether Mr. McNamara’s order was dis obeyed, ignored, or—as one of ficial suggested—“there was a kind of slippage” in putting it into effect.

July 5, 1972: Operation Popeye ended.

July 28, 1972: sponsored by Senators Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and Clairborne Pell, the US Senate voted for an amendment to cut off Defense Department funds for any use of rainmaking or creation of forest fires as a weapon of war.

The US Dept of Defense continued to deny such operations and also refused to discuss the operational aspects in Vietnam. (NYT article)

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Declassified

March 20, 1974, the Defense Department provided Senator
Pell’s Subcommittee with a top secret briefing on weather modification activities in Southeast Asia.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Environmental Modification Convention

The Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD), formally the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques is an international treaty prohibiting the military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects. It opened for signature on 18 May 1977 in Geneva and entered into force on 5 October 1978.

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

Fixing the Sky

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Contro

In  September 2010, James Rodger Fleming published Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control. In it he wrote: Although some claimed that [Operation Popeye] induced from 1 to 7 inches of additional rainfall annually along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, no scientific data were collected to verify the claim. General Westmoreland thought there was “no appreciable increase” in rain from the project. Even if the cloud seeding had produced a tactical victory or two in Vietnam (it did not), the extreme secrecy surrounding the operation and the subsequent denials and stonewalling of Congress by the military resulted in a major strategic defeat for military weather modification.

Related: 2011 Smithsonian article

Vietnam Operation Popeye Weather Control

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Seneca Falls Convention

July 19 – 20, 1848: Seneca Falls Convention About 300 people, including 40 men, met at America’s first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. There they adopt a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled closely after the Declaration of Independence, asserting the “self-evident” truth that “all men and women were created equal.” The delegates also adopt eleven resolutions, including one declaring it “the duty of women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.” (NPR article) (see January 23, 1849)

Voting Rights

July 19, 1917: Dudley Field Malone, collector of the Port of New York and personal friend of Woodrow Wilson, offers resignation five days after witnessing arrests of suffrage pickets, whom he offers to represent in court. Wilson declines Malone’s resignation; Malone later leaves administration over its handling of suffrage protests. (see Aug 14)

ERA

July 19–21, 1944: at its convention, the Democratic Party endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment. (see August 22, 1945)

Geraldine Ferraro

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

July 19, 1984: Geraldine Ferraro accepted the nomination of running mate to Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale. She was the first woman to be nominated for Vice President by either the Democratic or Republican Party. (2011 NYT obit) (see Dec 20)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Free Speech

Movie censorship

July 19, 1911: Pennsylvania became the first state in the US to approve laws allowing censorship of movies. (see February 23, 1915)

Colin Kaepernick

July 19, 2018: hours after The Associated Press reported that Miami Dolphins players who protest on the field during the anthem could be suspended for up to four games under a team policy issued, the NFL and the players union issued a joint statement saying the two sides were talking things out.

The NFL and NFLPA, through recent discussions, have been working on a resolution to the anthem issue. In order to allow this constructive dialogue to continue, we have come to a standstill agreement on the NFLPA’s grievance and on the NFL’s anthem policy. No new rules relating to the anthem will be issued or enforced for the next several weeks while these confidential discussions are ongoing,”  (FS & CK, see Aug 30; Labor, see Aug 25)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Black History

Washington DC revolt

July 19, 1919: racial violence erupted in Washington, D.C. when mobs of U.S. soldiers and sailors, home from the war in Europe, attacked African-Americans in response to rumors that an Africa-American had attempted to rape the white wife of a sailor. The police were reportedly “nowhere to be seen” as a mob of about 400 whites invaded the African-American neighborhood in southwest Washington. (Black Past article) (see July 27)

Wichita sit-in

July 19, 1958: a local NAACP chapter on this day sponsored a sit-in in Wichita, Kansas, challenging racially segregated public accommodations. The sit-in was successful, and local lunch counters were desegregated on August 11, 1958.

The Wichita sit-in was significant because the conventional history of the Civil Rights Movement presents the sit-in movement challenging segregated lunch counters and other public accommodations as beginning in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960. In fact, there were a number of earlier sit-ins. See, for example, the early sit-in on April 17, 1943; January 20, 1955; and August 19, 1958. The significance of the February 1960 sit-in is that it launched a national sit-in movement that swept the South and transformed the Civil Rights Movement. (NPR article) (see Aug 19)

Minneapolis revolt

July 19, 1967: a race riot broke out in the North Side of Minneapolis on Plymouth Street during the Minneapolis Aquatennial Parade and business were vandalized and fires break out in the area, although the disturbance is quelled within hours. However, the next day a shooting sets off another incident in the same area that leads to 18 fires, 36 arrests, 3 shootings, 2 dozen people injured, and damages totaling 4.2 million. There will be two more such incidents in the following two weeks. (MNopedia article) (BH & RR, see July 24)

Muhammad Ali

July 19, 1996: Muhammad Ali lights the flame at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. [Rolling Stone article] (BH, see Oct 10; Ali, see January 8, 2001)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEhNDUwksvU

Emmett Till

July 18, 2013: Willie Reed, who had changed his name to Willie Louis after the murder trial of Emmett Till and had moved to Chicago, died. Louis, one of the last living witnesses for the prosecution in the Till case, died in Oak Lawn, Ill., a Chicago suburb. He was 76. (BH, see July 19; see ET for expanded story)

Trayvon Martin

July 19, 2013:  President Barack Obama grappled with the Trayvon Martin case in the most personal of terms telling Americans that the slain youth “could have been me 35 years ago” and urging them to do some soul searching about their attitudes on race. He said it may be time to take a hard look at “stand your ground” self-defense laws, questioning whether they contribute “to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see.” (BH & TMS, see July 20; SYG, see Aug 8)

Samuel DuBose

July 19, 2015: in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ray Tensing, a University of Cincinnati police officer, shot and killed Samuel DuBose, an unarmed man, during a traffic stop for a missing front license plate. Tensing fired after DuBose started his car. Tensing stated that DuBose had begun to drive off and that he was being dragged because his arm was caught in the car. Prosecutors alleged that footage from Tensing’s bodycam showed that he was not dragged and a grand jury indicted him on charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter. [Tensing settlement] (B & S, see Sept 8; DuBose, see January 18, 2016)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

July 19 Music et al

Alan Freed

July 19, 1958: Alan Freed Enterprises, Inc filed for bankruptcy. (see Aug 29)

Festival finances

July 19, 1969: John Roberts and Michael Lang discuss finances. Roberts concerned about additional costs. (see Chronology for expanded story)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

World Trade Center

July 19. 1971:  the South Tower of the World Trade Center topped out. (Port Authority timeline on Towers) (see April 4, 1973)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

July 19, 1993: President Clinton announced his ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding gays in the American military. (see Dec 14)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Irish Troubles

July 19, 1997:  the Provisional IRA re-instated the ceasefire. (see Troubles for expanded story)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Fair Housing

July 19, 2013: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a proposed regulation that for the first time clearly defined the steps local and state governments that receive HUD funding must take to examine housing segregation based on race and show they are in line with the Fair Housing Act. (see Dec 3)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

July 19, 2018: the Interior Department proposed the most sweeping set of changes in decades to the Endangered Species Act, the law that brought the bald eagle and the Yellowstone grizzly bear back from the edge of extinction but which Republicans say is cumbersome and restricts economic development.

The proposed revisions had far-reaching implications, potentially making it easier for roads, pipelines and other construction projects to gain approvals than under current rules. One change, for instance, would eliminate longstanding language that prohibits considering economic factors when deciding whether or not a species should be protected.

The agency also intended to make it more difficult to shield species like the Atlantic sturgeon that are considered “threatened,” which is the category one level beneath the most serious one, “endangered.” (see Aug 2)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Pledge of Allegiance & Student Rights

July 19, 2018: U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison found that India Landry (see October 2, 2017) had a legitimate claim that her equal protection rights were breached and ruled that her family’s lawsuit can proceed over allegations that her expulsion was racially driven and violated her constitutional rights. (next PA, see Aug 30; next SR, see Sept 26; next Landry, see Dec 28)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

Family separation policy

July 19, 2018: US. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman granted Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s request to fast-track the multistate lawsuit filed last month against the Trump Administration’s family separation policy. In an unusually comprehensive 10 page order, Judge Pechman noted the unique background of this case and the particular risk of harm posed to the families involved.

Separated still

July 19, 2018: Federal officials said that 364 children had been reunited with their parents to comply with a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration bring together undocumented immigrant families separated under its “zero tolerance” policy. A majority of the nearly 2,600 immigrant children – who were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border with their parents for trying to illegally enter the country – still remained apart from their parents in facilities around the country.  (see July 24)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

July 18 Music et al

July 18 Music et al

Miles Davis

July 18 Music et al

July 18, 1960: Miles Davis released “Sketches of Spain” album.

Thom Jurek at AllMusic statedAlong with Kind of Blue, In a Silent Way, and Round About Midnight, Sketches of Spain is one of Miles Davis’ most enduring and innovative achievements. Recorded between November 1959 and March 1960 — after Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley had left the band — Davis teamed with Canadian arranger Gil Evans for the third time. Davis brought Evans the album’s signature piece, “Concierto de Aranjuez,” after hearing a classical version of it at bassist Joe Mondragon’s house. Evanswas as taken with it as Davis was, and set about to create an entire album of material around it. The result is a masterpiece of modern art. “

July 18 Music et al

Brenda Lee

July 18 – Aug 7, 1960: “I’m Sorry” by 15-year-old Brenda Lee #1 Billboard Hot 100. According to the Billboard Book of Number One Hits by Fred Bronson, Lee recorded the song early in 1960 but her label, Decca Records, held it from release for several months out of concern that a 15-year-old girl was not mature enough to sing about unrequited love. (2018 Stereo Gum article)  (see Sept 19 – Sept 25)

July 18 Music et al

Four Seasons

July 18 – 31, 1964: “Rag Doll” by the Four Seasons #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, their last #1 until March 1976 with “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).” Frankie Valli will have a #1 hit in August 1978 with Grease – his last #1.

July 18 Music et al

The Road to Bethel

July 18, 1969: Michael Lang and Ticia Bernuth explored Bethel area for another festival location. They “discover” the site.

In the afternoon Lang, Mel Lawrence, Elliot Tieber, and Morris Abraham met with Yasgur. The property he initially offered (across from his home?) was far too flat. He offered another site which turns out to be the same spot Lang had seen that morning. (see Chronology for expanded story)

July 18 Music et al