Category Archives: History

With 10 minutes left to play in the fourth quarter of Kansas City's 34-28 win over the Chargers on Thursday, Patrick Mahomes wasn't too thrilled with himself. The quarterback had just thrown an interception that set the Chargers up with an easy touchdown to give Los Angeles a 21-13 lead.

Apparently, throwing that interception flipped a switch inside of Mahomes, because not only did he catch fire after the pick, but he ended up making some NFL history. Over the final nine minutes and 30 seconds of the fourth quarter and into overtime, Mahomes would complete 10 fo 13 passes for 197 yards and three touchdowns.

By throwing those three touchdown passes, Mahomes put his name in the NFL record book and that's because he became just the fourth quarterback in NFL history to throw three game-tying or lead-changing touchdowns in the fourth quarter or later of a game, according to ESPN Stats and Info.

Here's the list of quarterbackswho have pulled off the feat:

2021:Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes (at Chargers)2020:Browns QB Baker Mayfield (at Bengals)2018:Cowboys QB Dak Prescott (vs. Eagles)2009:Raiders QB Bruce Gradkowski (at Steelers)

The most surprising part of this list is probably the fact that only four quarterbacks have ever pulled this off. To join the list, you need a defense that melts down in the fourth quarter and then you need an offense that can answer every score made by the other team.

In Thursday's game, the touchdowns were all huge and that's mostly because the Chiefs needed every single one of them. The first one, a one-yard pass to Tyreek Hill, tied the game up at 21. After that the Chargers answered with a touchdown of their own, Mahomes drove right down the field again and threw another TD pass, this time a seven-yard score to Travis Kelce that tied the game at 28.

In overtime, Mahomes put the final nail in the Chargers' coffin with a 34-yard walk-off touchdown pass to Kelce that gave Kansas City the win.

Overall, Mahomes threw for a season-high 410 yards.

With the win, Mahomes is now 12-0 in his career in divisional road games. Not only is that the longest streak to start a career, but it's also tied with Peyton Manning for the second-longest overall streak in NFL history. Manning won 12 straight divisional road games from 2010 to 2015 (Manning won one with the Colts in 2010 and then nine straight once he joined the Broncos).

To break the record, Mahomes would have to win at least nine more games and that's because Joe Montana once won 20 consecutive divisional road games from 1984 to 1993. Montana's streak started with the 49ers and then continued into his first season with the Chiefs in 1993 before ending in his first road game of 1994 against the Chargers.

Continue reading here:

Patrick Mahomes becomes just the fourth QB in NFL history to pull off this rare late game feat - CBS Sports

With football now dominated by rocket-armed quarterbacks and fleet-footed receivers, its hard to imagine the sport without the forward pass. The play, however, was illegal for nearly four decades after the sports inception. When passing was finally permitted in 1906, to improve player safety, critics predicted it would dilute the sport's rugged essence and drive away fans. But it had the opposite effect.

In football's early years, yardage was tough to acquire; points were even scarcer. Wearing little padding and protective equipment, players who used their bodies as battering rams suffered not just kicks, bites and eye gouges but wrenched spines and cracked skulls.

But football wasnt just extremely violent. It was deadly.

The Chicago Tribune reported 18 football-related fatalities in 1904, mostly among prep school players. After another 19 died the following year, universities such as Stanford, Northwestern and Duke dropped football. Others threatened to do the same unless changes were made.

Prodded by President Theodore Roosevelt, an avid football fan who worried that the gamecould be outlawed if not made safer, more than 60 schools met after the 1905 season and approved rulebook revisions. Among them were the abolition of dangerous mass formations, the creation of a neutral zone between offenses and defenses, the doubling of the first-down distance to 10 yards and legalization of the forward pass.

Although any player behind the line of scrimmage was permitted to pass, the rules committee imposed severe restraints that hampered offenses. Passes couldnt be thrown or caught within five yards of each side of the line of scrimmage, and only the two ends on the line of scrimmage were eligible to make catches.

Additionally, passes that crossed the goal line resulted in touchbacks to defenses, and out-of-bounds throws were given to defenses at the spots where they left the field. Passes that hit the ground without being touched by any player resulted in turnovers.

The forward pass has been so well hedged about with restrictions as to make it a play that must be thoroughly practiced and well executed to be of use, wrote rules committee member Walter Camp, a staunch foe of the play.

Pass proponents such as Georgia Tech coach John Heisman believed the forward pass would inject speed and skill into football and open up the game by compelling defenders to spread out in coverage. But opponents such as Camp believed it emasculated the sports brute nature.

Many predict the ruination of the game through the drastic reformation, reported the New York Times of the sports rule changes heading into the 1906 season.

READ MORE: The Heisman Trophy Is Named After This Coach and Innovator

Those who feared the forward pass would immediately ruin football neednt have worried because old-school coaches of the Easts top colleges viewed it as a risky gimmick. Yale tried only three passes in its season opener. All failed.

Well executed they are undoubtedly highly spectacular, but the risk of dropping the ball is so great as to make the practice extremely hazardous and its desirability doubtful, the New York Times editorialized.

Unlike the Eastern elites, Saint Louis University coach Eddie Cochems gave the new rule the old college try. Before the start of the 1906 season, he cloistered his team in a Jesuit retreat in Wisconsin, as he later wrote, for the sole purpose of studying and developing the pass.

In the opener for Saint Louis against Carroll College on September 5, 1906, Bradbury Robinson threw footballs first legal forward pass. The toss hit the ground untouched, resulting in a turnover. But Robinson later connected on a 20-yard touchdown pass. Thanks in part to the forward pass, undefeated Saint Louis outscored its 1906 opponents, 407-11.

Glenn Pop Warner also embraced the forward pass as a way for his 1907 Carlisle Indian Industrial School squad to compete against collegiate powers with stronger, deeper rosters. Warner designed the Carlisle formation, forerunner of the single-wing offense, which gave players options to run, pass or kick.

Carlisle showcased its aerial game in front of 20,000 fans in Philadelphia against the University of Pennsylvania in a battle of unbeatens. Playing in his first college game, Jim Thorpe was among the Carlisle players who completed a pass in Carlisle's decisive victory.

Carlisle's shutout loss the following week at Princeton, however, demonstrated the limitations of the forward pass. Without pass interference penalties, Princetons defenders continually grabbed Carlisle receivers to prevent them from catching the ball.

Because the rulebook discouraged passing, football continued to be a ground-and-pound gameand a lethal one. The Chicago Tribune reported 31 football-related deaths between September 1908 and the summer of 1909, and Army and Navy cancelled their 1909 seasons after each team had a player die from football injuries.

The continued fatalities brought additional tweaks to passing rules, such as no longer making untouched throws turnovers. The aerial game, however, remained a passing fancy until a relatively unknown Catholic school used it to score one of college football's greatest upsets.

New York University's Tom Cappozzoli demonstrates an early passing technique, one much different from today's.

Seymour Wally/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Before the 1913 season, Notre Dames Gus Dorais and Knute Rockne practiced the forward pass while lifeguarding in Ohio. The training paid off when the Irish unleashed a high-flying assault at West Point that overwhelmed Army onNovember 1, 1913.

Notre Dame opened the scoring when Dorais threw a 40-yard touchdown pass that Rockne caught in stride, and the throws kept coming as the Irish scored five passing touchdowns. Dorais completed 14 of 17 passes for 243 yards in the victory that put Notre Dame on the football map.

Everybody seemed astonished, Rockne later wrote. There had been no hurdling, no tackling, no plunging, no crushing of fiber and sinew. Just a long-distance touchdown by rapid transit.

The passing techniques used in the early 1900s differed from what football fans are familiar with today. Some players left their feet to make jump passes, while others tossed footballs underhanded or end over end.

As the forward pass became more common, the football itself evolved from a watermelon-shaped orb that could be shot-putted to a slimmer oval that was easier to grip and could be thrown in a spiral.

In the 1930s, the spirals were flying out of the hands of Texas Christian University quarterbacks Sammy Baugh and Davey OBrien, winner of the 1938 Heisman Trophy. Employing a spread offense with two wide receivers and two slot receivers, TCU threw the ball as many as 40 times in a game, and their star quarterbacks eventually took their aerial skills to the fledgling National Football League.

After being drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, OBrien set an NFL record in his 1939 rookie season with 1,324 passing yards, only to be surpassed by Baugh the following year. Slingin Sammy set another record in 1947 when he threw for nearly 3,000 yards, a mark that wouldnt be surpassed until Johnny Unitas did so in 1960.

The running game, however, remained an offensive mainstay.

When Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson led the NFL with 2,667 passing yards in 1974, it was more than 1,000 fewer than Washingtons Sonny Jurgensen tossed in 1967. The NFL responded in the 1970s by allowing offensive linemen to block with their hands and tightening restrictions on the contact defenders could make with receivers.

Since the turn of the century, the NFL enacted further rule changes to promote passing, such as barring helmet shots and low hits on the quarterback. The pass-happy game has fueled the growth of fantasy football leagues and television ratings. Defying the prediction that it would cause the sports demise, the forward pass instead made football Americas most popular sport.

READ MORE: Who Invented Football?

Originally posted here:

How the Forward Pass Saved Football - History

The Saints have had the Buccaneers' number for years, including in their first matchup this season.

NEW ORLEANS Most of the "experts" are counting out the Saints tonight.

According to data collected by NFL Pickwatch, 99% of pro football experts and media outlets are picking the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to beat the Saints Sunday.

It's easy to see why. The 6-7 Saints just broke a 5-game losing skid and they'll be without head coach Sean Payton, as well as both of their All-Pro offensive tackles.

On the other hand, the 10-3 Buccaneers are tied for the top spot in the NFC with the league's top offense led by Tom Brady.

But as we all know, the Saints have had the Buccaneers' number for years, including in their first matchup this season.

The Bucs were favorites to beat the Saints on Halloween, but backup QB Trevor Siemian took over for an injured Jameis Winston and led the team to an upset victory.

In fact, the Saints have won their last six regular-season games against the Buccaneers. Though, they did lose to them in last year's playoffs.

And who could forget 2020's Saints-Bucs game in Tampa where the Bucs were picked to steamroll the Saints in Drew Brees' last season? The Saints former QB hasn't forgotten how that one went...

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99% of NFL experts pick Bucs to beat Saints, but history says it won't be that easy - WWLTV.com

Deebo closing in on unique NFL history as 49ers receiver originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea

Deebo Samuel earlier this season already became just the third player, and the first receiver, in NFL history to record 1,000 receiving yards and score at least five touchdowns as a receiver and five rushing touchdowns. With only four games left in the regular season, he also is closing in on more unique history.

The 49ers' Swiss Army knife on offense could become the first receiver to lead his team in rushing TDs since the 1970 NFL merger, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.

In 12 games played, Samuel has six rushing touchdowns. That's one more than 49ers rookie running back Elijah Mitchell, who will miss his second straight game Sunday against the Atalanta Falcons with a concussion and knee injury. Mitchell could miss next Thursday's game against the Tennessee Titans, too.

Samuel's five receiving TDs also are just one behind tight end George Kittle's six.

With the 49ers being hit by injuries, the third-year pro has been used much more as a running back than a receiver in his last three games. Over that span, he only has three receptions for 49 yards and hasn't scored a touchdown as a receiver, but also has 22 carries for 182 yards and four touchdowns.

To 49ers offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel, it's not about how the team gets the ball in Samuel's hands. It's just making sure they can find advantages with him against the defense.

"With Deebo, its game by game, how can we get him the ball?" McDaniel said Thursday. "Some games you'll see him in the backfield more, some games you won't. It all depends on the defense and how we're able to get him the ball and what advantages it presents for the rest of the offense.

Sunday's Falcons vs. 49ers showdown at Levi's Stadium will be a battle against versatile offensive weapons in Samuel and Cordarrelle Patterson of the Falcons. Patterson, who is listed as a running back after being a return specialist and receiver in the past, has 1,066 yards from scrimmage and 10 total touchdowns. Samuel has 1,268 yards from scrimmage and 11 total touchdowns.

How each player is best utilized could be all the difference.

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49ers' Deebo Samuel on way to NFL rushing TD history as receiver - Yahoo Sports

The Philadelphia Eagles-Washington Football Team game has been moved to Tuesday in wake of WASTEAM failing COVID test after COVID test as the omicron variant spreads. Please get vaccinated if you havent already, and if you have but havent gotten your booster yet please get it.

From a purely football standpoint, this sucks. We can go into the fairness of rescheduling a game because of one team, or how we know that there are players who faked vaccination cards, or how WASTEAM went from being publicly scolded by their coach to get vaccinated to being over 90% vaccinated, or how the league said it wouldnt reschedule games if there was an outbreak by unvaccinated players and that the first WASTEAM player put in COVID protocols has outright said he is unvaccinated.

This sucks because Tuesday football has historically sucked.

1941: Cleveland Rams 10, Chicago Cardinals 6

Yes, you read that right. The Rams used to play in Cleveland and the Cardinals used to play in Chicago. Coincidentally both would go on to play in St. Louis.

Was it a good game?

It was for the Rams, they wouldnt win another game all year.

But no, this was not a good game. These teams would finish in last and next to last in the NFL West in 1941. If you combined their offenses they would have finished tied for 3rd in scoring.

1944: Philadelphia Eagles 28, Boston Yanks 7

Yeah thats right. The Boston Yanks. Their home stadium was Fenway Park. They ceased to exist after the 1948 season so that the owner could get a tax write off. That sounds more realistic today than a Boston team playing in Fenway Park naming themselves the Yanks.

Was it a good game?

Of course it was, the Eagles won. Seriously though, this game stunk. The Yanks only mustered 66 total yards. 25 of those were on their only TD, which was scored by a guy named Ted Williams. I am not making this up.

1945: Brooklyn Tigers/Boston Yanks 28, Pittsburgh Steelers 7

No, this wasnt a threeway. During WWII teams had issues filling out full rosters, so they combined efforts. In 1943 the Eagles and Steelers teamed up, they were memorably but unofficially called the Steagles. In 1944 the Steelers teamed up with the Cardinals. They were not called the Stardinals, thankfully. In 1945 the Brooklyn Tigers and Boston Yanks combined, splitting their home games at Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium, they were simply known as The Yanks. I would have gone with The Tanks.

After 1946 the NFL got tired of scheduling games on a Tuesdays, so they just scheduled them only on Saturdays or Mondays.

Was it a good game?

It was not. There were 10 total turnovers in the game, which even by 1945 standards was a lot, there were 6 turnovers a game on average that year. The Steelers were dreadful in 1945, their 7 points in this game was the third highest of the season. This game was so forgettable that the box score says the Steelers scored on a passing TD but their season stats show no passing touchdowns for the entire season.

1946: New York Giants 16, Boston Yanks 0

This was the last NFL game to be played on a Tuesday for nearly six decades.

Was it a good game?

No. The Giants shut out the Yanks to start their season, it would end in the NFL Championship Game. The Yanks also started their season with this game, they would go winless in their first 8 games.

1946: San Francisco 49ers 34, Miami Seahawks 7

1946: Cleveland Browns 34, Miami Seahawks 0

Yeah thats right, the Miami Seahawks. Did you know? Theres not actually a Seahawk bird. The osprey is at times called a sea hawk. As mascots that dont actually exist go, its a minor offense, even if its been repeated.

How come Ive never heard of the Miami Seahawks you might ask. There are two reasons. One is because this game, and the next three, were played in the All-America Football Conference, which existed from 1946 to 1949 before the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts were merged into the NFL, while the Los Angeles Dons were merged with the NFLs Los Angeles Rams. The rest of the teams were told to piss off.

The AAFC needed to be different to stand out. One way they did so was by not being a Sunday league. Of their 14 games, the Seahawks played just two on a Sunday. Six were played on a Friday, four on a Monday, and two on a Tuesday. Such a variety of days wasnt unusual. Nor was it entirely by design. Some teams shared stadiums with other, more established college teams or MLB teams and thus werent able to get first choice on dates.

Were they good games?

Ill put it this way: the other reason you havent heard of the Miami Seahawks is because they folded after one year.

1948: Cleveland Browns 14, Baltimore Colts 10

This was the final AAFC game to be played on a Tuesday, in 1949, the final year of the league, the AAFC had moved to a predominately Sunday schedule.

Was it a good game?

Im going to say yes. These were two of the best teams in the league. The Browns dominated the AAFC, going 47-4-3 and winning the AAFC title in every season. In 1948 they went 14-0. The Colts finished 7-7, but that was good enough for the third best record in the league (which sums up how bad the AAFC was as a whole) and tied for first in the East division. At kickoff both teams were division leaders, and featured two star passers: Otto Graham for the Browns and YA Tittle for the Colts. A close game between two of the best teams in the league is easily the best Tuesday night game there has ever been.

2010: Minnesota Vikings 24, Philadelphia Eagles 14

After the Miracle at the New Meadowlands the week prior put the Eagles in playoff contention, the league flexed this game from 1pm to the night game. They shouldnt have. A blizzard developed days before the game, and was scheduled to hit around the end of the game. Rightfully worried about safety, the league decided to postpone the game to Tuesday. Had they just left it at its original 1pm slot, everyone would have been home before the snow really hit.

This was the third straight game the Vikings had changed on them because of snow. The Metrodome roof collapsed due to heavy snow, and the Vikings played their remaining home games at different stadiums.

Was it a good game?

Joe Webb.

2020: Tennessee Titans 42, Buffalo Bills 16

The first COVID-19 Tuesday game, it would not be the last. The Titans had an outbreak of COVID, and the league pushed the game to Tuesday. The Titans were also fined for violating protocols after it was discovered that players held their own practice after being explicitly told by the league not to.

Was it a good game?

It was last year and you almost certainly dont remember it, so no. Josh Allen threw two interceptions that set up the Titans in the red zone and Andre Roberts fumbled a kickoff return that also set up the Titans in the red zone. Matt Barkley played.

2020: Baltimore Ravens 34, Dallas Cowboys 17

Was it a good game?

Of course it was, the Cowboys lost. Seriously though, this one stunk too. Andy Dalton needed 48 attempts to pass for 285 yards. At least it was over quickly, finishing in under 3 hours thanks in part to Lamar Jackson having more rushing attempts than completions, and he completed over 70% of his passes. The Cowboys offense crossed midfield only four times, three of those ended with a missed field goal.

Never play games on a Tuesday.

Continued here:

A brief history of the awfulness of Tuesday football - Bleeding Green Nation

As one of only two states in the entire Western United States, California could scarcely have been more isolated at the start of the Civil War. No transcontinental railroad or telegraph yet connected it to the rest of the country, and no battles would be fought there. Nonetheless, California proved pivotal to the Union war effort, propping up the economy with its vast gold reserves, raising huge sums for military medical assistance, and providing a high number of troops per capita.

It was never a fait accompli that California would join the Union. Though admitted as a free state as part of the Compromise of 1850, some white residents continued to illegally enslave Black people there, even as a movement arose to ban African Americans from the state altogether. At the same time, the state legislature promulgated a system that forced many Native Americans into bondage.

WATCH: Civil War Documentaries on HISTORY Vault

Pro-slavery Democrats, known locally as the Chivalry, or Chivs, were particularly prominent in southern California and were led by Senator William M. Gwin, who owned hundreds of slaves back in his former home state of Mississippi. In 1859, the Chiv-dominated state legislature even passed a bill that would have split California in two, with the southern half open to slavery. (The U.S. Congress never entertained the plan, thereby killing it.)

That same year, the pro-slavery chief justice of the state Supreme Court slayed a less slavery-inclined U.S. Senator from California in a duel.

You had to be somewhat courageous to try and stir up Union sentiment in some parts of California, says Glenna Matthews, author of The Golden State in the Civil War: Thomas Starr King, the Republican Party, and the Birth of Modern California. In downtown Los Angeles, for instance, it was impossible to fly the Stars and Stripes.

With so many Southern sympathizers around, including in the highest reaches of the Army, Confederate President Jefferson Davis purportedly expected California to devolve into crippling infighting, if not secede entirely. But he made a major miscalculation. As it turned out, his supporters, though vocal, were vastly outnumbered by other Californians who increasingly rallied to the Union cause.

Indeed, state residents responded with aplomb to a federal call for troops in the summer of 1861, immediately forming two cavalry and five infantry regiments. By the end of the Civil War, some 17,000 Californians, many of them veterans of the Gold Rush, would serve as Union soldiers out of a total population of less than 400,000. (An additional couple hundred men would join the Confederacy.)

This is more manpower than the [West] has ever seen before, says Andrew E. Masich, president of the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh and author of Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861-1867, who points out that the California troops were in many ways superior to their Eastern counterparts.

They can ride, they can shoot, they can live outdoors in harsh conditions, Masich says. They can also march faster and longer distancesand theyre certainly risktakers. To top it off, quartermasters found them to be taller than the men in the Army of the Potomac, with bigger heads and feet.

A California Civil War company formed in Hayward in 1861 poses for photo.

Courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California

These new California volunteers were needed, firstly, to replace the Army regulars who had been sent East to fight in the wars major battles. Stationed throughout the West, from Kansas to Washington, California troops protected mail routes, built and repaired forts and roads, mapped largely uncharted territories, provided border security, and safeguarded supply shipments.

They also swooped into Confederate hotbeds, such as the Los Angeles region, capturing armed rebel sympathizers at gunpoint and jailing them and other criminal secessionists in places like Fort Alcatraz (later the site of the notorious prison).

The largest California-centric operation of the war kicked off in spring 1862, when 2,350 troops from the Golden Statelater to be followed by around 6,000 morebegan a 900-mile march from Fort Yuma in southeastern California to El Paso, Texas. Led by officer James Henry Carleton, this so-called California Column helped repel a Confederate invasion of New Mexico Territory.

Carleton and his men then went about setting up the newly formed Arizona Territory. Several veterans of the California Column were even elected to the Arizona legislature in 1864, while others served as prominent doctors, lawyers, judges, merchants, ranchers, and miners.

Outside of two skirmishes, however, they never much battled the graycoats. In fact, the entire California Column suffered only three deaths at the hands of Confederate gunfire. Instead, the men spent much of their time in Arizona waging war against the Apache, which had launched a campaign to expel Federals and Confederates alike from their territory.

Though both sides committed massacres, the Californians were particularly brutal, at one point slaughtering at least 50 Apache, including women and children, during a surprise nighttime assault on a village. On another occasion, Apache leader Mangas Coloradas was captured after being lured in under a flag of truce. According to some reports, the Californians then apparently tortured him with heated bayonets, shot him to death during an alleged escape attempt, boiled his severed head to remove the flesh, and finally shipped his skull East as a macabre, pseudoscientific souvenir.

California volunteers aggressively confronted other Indian tribes as well, perpetrating so many acts of violenceand speaking so openly of exterminationthat some historians consider their actions to be part of a genocide. Records show that, from the time of the Gold Rush to just past the end of the Civil War, federal troops, state militias, and white vigilantes killed at least 9,492 to 16,094 Native Americans in California alone, many of them non-combatants.

Even when not shooting them down, armed Californians seized Native American prisoners, sold women and children into bondage, deported tribes wholesale, and engaged in systematic destruction of their food supplies, leading to countless additional deaths. A particularly notorious incident, which came to be known as the Konkow Maidu Trail of Tears, occurred in September 1863, when 461 poorly provisioned tribespeople were forcibly marched roughly 100 miles over rugged terrain. Only 277 arrived at their destination.

Of all the California soldiers in the Civil War, not all made their way East to the major theaters of the conflict. However, a group of about 500 mostly Eastern-born Californians sailed down the Pacific coast, crossed the Isthmus of Panama (prior to the construction of the canal), and eventually landed in Boston. There, the men, collectively known as the California Battalion, joined the Second Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment.

From there, the California Battalion participated in the defense of Washington, D.C., countered the lightening guerilla raids of Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby (nicknamed the Gray Ghost), helped oust the Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley, and contributed to the decisive siege of Petersburg. In the process, they earned the respect of their enemies, with one Confederate soldier calling the Californians notoriously good fighters.

Manpower, however, was just one aspect of Californias contribution to the war effort. Tens of millions of dollars worth of the states gold, shipped East by steamboat, also played a major role, a fact not lost on either Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln.

At times, California troops were even ordered to drop their other duties to prospect for gold. A tremendous amount of wealth was being uncovered in California, Matthews says, which, though the gold bullion generally went to Northern banks, not the federal government, reassured people that the United States was not going to bankrupt itself. And so it became easier for the U.S. government to get loans.

Equally important, the California troops kept the gold out of rebel hands (and blocked their access to the Pacific), thus denying the Confederacy the wealth and ports that they so desired in the West, Masich says.

In addition to gold, Californians sent money across the country as well, using the newly installed transatlantic telegraph line. Most notably, they raised over $1.2 millionfar more than any other statefor the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a precursor to the Red Cross that provided food, clothes, and medicine to sick and wounded soldiers, thereby filling a gap left open by the Armys paltry medical establishment.

People were remote from the fighting, yet they wanted to support the war, Matthews says. That was the dawn of the California ATM, as fundraisers like to think of us.

With prominent civilians like Thomas Starr King, a Unitarian minister who had recently moved from Boston to San Francisco, drumming up support for the Sanitary Commission and the Union as a whole, California politics began to shift. In 1860, for example, Lincoln won only 32 percent of the California vote, whereas in 1864 he won 59 percent.

To see the turnaround was extremely heartening to people, Matthews says, adding that it kept Northern sentiment uplifted when there were so many dark days.

Lincoln himself was greatly appreciative of California, telling a friend that he wished to visit the wonderful state, and that the production of her gold mines has been a marvel to me, and her noble stand for the Union, her generous liberal offerings to the Sanitary Commission, and her loyal representativeshave endeared [her] people to me.

Continued here:

California's Little-Known Role in the American Civil War - History

Dak Prescott, left, and Brett Favre greeted one another at halftime of a Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys game on Oct. 16, 2016. Neither Prescott, nor Favre, was a particularly highly recruited college prospect. (Associated Press)Credit: AP Photo, Matt Ludtke

So, its National Signing Day, and worried-sick college football fans across the state of Mississippi are glued to the Internet, hoping for good news for their favorite teams.

The most zealous of these fans know how many recruiting stars every player has. They know who is recruiting whom. They know all that and more.

But they should remember this: Many of the greatest players in this states football history were not that highly recruited. Some were hardly recruited at all. Some were signed as afterthoughts.

For todays purposes, lets just look at quarterbacks. And lets start with Mississippi State and the greatest quarterback in Bulldog history, Dak Prescott. Now that Prescott has become one of the most highly productive and most highly paid players in the NFL this after breaking all the passing and total offense records at State you naturally would assume he was considered a five-star, cant miss prospect. And you would be wrong.

No, Prescott was a rated a three-star prospect out of Haughton, La. The popular website 247sports.com had him ranked the 23rd best prospect in Louisiana and had him ranked behind 600 other college prospects. Prescott grew up a Texas Longhorns fan. That was his dream school. But Texas would not give him so much as a sniff.

LSU, who normally gets most any Louisiana prospect it wants, recruited him, until after his senior season, as a tight end. Mississippi State was the SEC school that went after him hard. After Prescott came back and lit everyone up his senior year, LSU finally offered him as a quarterback. By then, it was too late. The rest is history, and Dak is still making it.

Oh, and the quarterback Texas signed that year? He was somebody named David Ash.

Lets move to Southern Miss. Surely the most famous quarterback in Golden Eagle history is Brett Favre. Many long-time USM fans would argue that the best quarterback in school history was Reggie Collier. For todays purposes, it doesnt matter. Neither was highly recruited.

Colliers college recruitment was overshadowed and then some by another quarterback from nearby Colliers DIberville home. Ocean Springs Eddie Hornback might have been the most highly recruited player in the country in 1978. Nearly every football power in the country flocked to Ocean Springs to recruit Hornback. Meanwhile, Southern Miss had to fight off only Tulane to land Collier, who became one of the greatest dual threat quarterbacks ever Lamar Jackson before Lamar Jackson. Collier numbered Alabama, Florida State, Ole Miss and Mississippi State among his victims. Hornback, a fine athlete who battled injuries, wound up playing another position at State.

About a decade later, on the other end of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, another unsung high school quarterback was even more lightly recruited than Collier. His name was Favre, and he thought he was going to Delta State until the day before signing day. Thats when Southern Miss lost a quarterback recruit to Alabama, opening up a scholarship. Favre got it. He went to USM as the seventh QB on a seven-QB depth chart. By the third game of his freshman season, he was a 17-year-old starter. You know the rest of that story.

And that brings us to Ole Miss and 1966, and the most beloved player in Rebel football history, College Football Hall of Fame and consensus All American Archie Manning. On signing day in 1966, Manning was one of six quarterbacks signed by Ole Miss and he might have been the least recruited of all.

For certain, four of the other five were considered much more valued recruiting prizes than Manning, a talented, but rail-thin athlete from the tiny Delta town of Drew. Just consider the way Ole Miss coaching legend John Vaught handled recruiting day. He sent Tom Swayze, his recruiting guru, to Meridian to sign Bob White, the states most prized recruit. If there had been recruiting stars back then, White would have been awarded all five.

Vaught went himself to McComb to sign the great Freddy Brister, who played QB at McComb but would become a terrific Ole Miss linebacker. He sent trusted lieutenant Roland Dale to Gulfport to sign Don Farrar, another quarterback who would become a linebacker. And he sent John Cain, another long-time and trusted assistant off to Center Point, Ala., to sign Shug Chumbler, who would become Mannings back-up.

Archie Manning? Vaught called on graduate assistant Roy Stinnett, a former high school coach, to sign Manning. It was a matter of convenience, really. Manning was playing in a basketball tournament at Clarksdale that weekend. Stinnett, who refereed high school basketball on the side, was officiating every game.

So you can imagine how that that went. Drew won on Thursday night and again on Friday night. With Manning leading the way, Drew won in the semifinals again on Saturday morning. That afternoon, Manning changed out of his basketball uniform, and Stinnett changed out of his referees uniform, and they posed for photos of Manning signing his scholarship.

That night, Manning led Drew to the championship. He might have had some help.

Fifty-five years later, what does Manning remember most about the day?

Says Manning, I shot about a million free throws. Thats all Im gonna say about that.

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by Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today December 15, 2021

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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In an incredible historic first, a human-made spacecraft has swooped in and made contact with the Sun.

On 28 April 2021, NASA's Parker Solar Probe actually flew into and through the solar corona, the upper atmosphere of the Sun. Not only did it live to tell the tale proving the efficacy of Parker's high-tech heat shielding it took in situ measurements, giving us a wealth of never-before-seen data on the heart of our Solar System.

"Parker Solar Probe 'touching the Sun' is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat," said astrophysicist Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

"Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun's evolution and its impacts on our Solar System, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the Universe."

Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018, with its primary objective to probe the solar corona. In its planned seven-year mission, it should be making a total of 26 close approaches, or perihelions, to the Sun, using a total of seven gravity assist maneuvers from Venus to bring it ever closer. The April perihelion was the eighth, and the first to actually enter the corona.

In its nearly five hours inside the solar atmosphere, Parker measured fluctuations in the Sun's magnetic field and sampled particles. Previously, our estimates of these properties relied on external information.

"Flying so close to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe now senses conditions in the magnetically dominated layer of the solar atmosphere the corona that we never could before," said astrophysicist Nour Raouafi, Parker project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

"We see evidence of being in the corona in magnetic field data, solar wind data, and visually in images. We can actually see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be observed during a total solar eclipse."

(NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory)

Above: The bright features visible in the pictures here are coronal streamers, normally only seen from Earth during an eclipse. These were imaged by the Parker probe during the ninth perihelion in August this year.

The Sun doesn't have a solid surface. Instead, its boundary is defined by what we call the Alfvn critical surface, where gravity and the Sun's magnetic fields are too weak to contain the solar plasma.

Above this point, the solar wind emerges, blowing powerfully through the Solar System, so fast that waves within the wind break away from the Sun. What we call the 'surface' of the Sun, composed of roiling convection cells plasma and known as the photosphere, is far below.

One of the goals of Parker was to find out more about the Alfvn critical surface; namely, where it is, and what its topography is like, since we didn't know either of those things. Estimates had put the Alfvn critical surface at somewhere between 10 and 20 solar radii from the center of the Sun. Parker entered the corona at 19.7 solar radii, dipping down to as low as 18.4 solar radii during its corona jaunt.

Interestingly, the probe seemed to encounter the magnetic conditions of the corona sporadically, suggesting that the Alfvn critical surface is wrinkled. At lower depths, Parker encountered a magnetic structure known as a pseudostreamer, which we can see arcing out from the Sun during solar eclipses. Parker's data suggest that these structures are responsible for the deformation of the Alfvn critical surface, although we don't currently know why.

Inside the pseudostreamer, conditions were quieter than the surrounding solar atmosphere. Particles no longer buffeted the spacecraft quite so chaotically, and the magnetic field was more orderly.

Parker also investigated a phenomenon known as solar switchbacks. These are Z-shaped kinks in the magnetic field of the solar wind, and it's not currently known where or how they form. We've known about switchbacks since the 1990s, but it wasn't until Parker investigated them in 2019 that we learnt that they are rather common. Then on its sixth flyby, the probe's data showed us that switchbacks occur from patches.

Now Parker has detected them inside the solar atmosphere, suggesting that at least some of the switchbacks come from the lower corona.

"The structure of the regions with switchbacks matches up with a small magnetic funnel structure at the base of the corona," said astronomer Stuart Bale of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author on a paper on the phenomenon in press at The Astrophysical Journal. "This is what we expect from some theories, and this pinpoints a source for the solar wind itself."

We still don't know how these curious structures formed, but with dozens more perihelions ahead, going as close as 9.86 solar radii from the center of the Sun, we're likely to be getting some pretty fascinating answers.

"We have been observing the Sun and its corona for decades, and we know there is interesting physics going on there to heat and accelerate the solar wind plasma. Still, we cannot tell precisely what that physics is," Raouafi said.

"With Parker Solar Probe now flying into the magnetically-dominated corona, we will get the long-awaited insights into the inner workings of this mysterious region."

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

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For The First Time in History, a Spacecraft Has 'Touched' The Sun - ScienceAlert

Ralph Fiennes goes full throttle in The King's Man.

You know what history lessons need? More fights. New movie The King's Man is a loud, lewd and quite demented romp through the politics and tragedy of the past, a blackly comic and often quite deranged roller coaster of stylized action spectacle in a range of mustaches.

Opening Dec. 22 in competition with both The Matrix Resurrections and the omicron variant, The King's Man is the latest in a series that's proved itself a plucky box office contender. The Kingsman series follows a suite of suave spies operating out of a discreet tailor's shop in London, armed with impeccable suits, gadgets that would make James Bond blush, and a gleefully irreverent twist on the espionage genre. It began as a comic called The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, before director Matthew Vaughan's 2014 action movie adaptation made Colin Firth an unlikely action hero. Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson and newcomer Taron Egerton also starred in a flick that was enough of a hit to spawn a sequel, 2017's The Golden Circle, starring Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum and Elton John.

Now Vaughan brings the formula of black comedy, genre-twisting self-awareness and hyperstylized action sequences to a prequel exploring how the Kingsman agency came into being during the dark days of World War I. Comparable to the supercharged Sherlock Holmes films directed by Matthew Vaughan's old mucker Guy Ritchie, it's like Brideshead Revisited meets John Wick. Trashy and deliberately and provocatively fun, The King's Man does for spy movies what The Suicide Squad did for superheroes.

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The film opens in 1902, in the heat and dust of the Boer War between imperial Britain and South African farmers. Ralph Fiennes plays the pacifist Duke or Earl or Lord of Oxford, disquieted by his fellow aristocratic Brits smugly showing off their new invention: something called a "concentration camp." This is the first sign The King's Man has something to say about aristocracy. And it isn't exactly subtle, delivering a scathing polemic against venal, grasping, power-hungry politicians across the globe. In a bravura piece of casting as scathing satire, the same actor (Tom Hollander) plays Germany's kaiser, Russia's czar and Britain's king, to emphasize how unthinkable global bloodshed sprung from petty family feuding.

One dead wife and 12 years later, Oxford and his fully grown son Conrad (an angelic Harris Dickinson) are dispatched on a sensitive mission to feel out Euro-noble Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Scholars of WWI know how that works out. As the world is plunged into war, father and son set out on a globe-trotting quest to head off a fiendish conspiracy.

Though Kingsman began as a comic, this prequel story was concocted for this film and isn't directly adapted from any comic. Yet it feels more like an adaptation of a series of comic issues, because it's divided up into such an episodic structure. That doesn't do much for the overall cohesiveness of the film, especially when the most memorable threat is dispatched early and the film struggles to fill the gap. But it also rushes along at such a breathless pace, filled with a jittery bombardment of flashbacks and inserts, that you barely have time to notice.

Visual flourishes are everywhere, like a match cut between huge moustaches on opposite sides of the world, a dizzying zoom up a torpedo tube, or a devastating time-lapse shot showing pastoral countryside bombarded to trench-sliced muddy hellscape in just a few moments. As you'd expect from this series, the fights are intricately choreographed and exhilaratingly bonkers. Among the cast, Rhys Ifans in particular gives it his full-throated all as a feral Rasputin. But it isn't all fun: there's a startingly nightmarish silent knife fight which provides a macabre counterpoint to the other jolly punch-ups.

Rah-rah Rhys Ifans as Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine.

The credits list a history advisor and a facial hair supervisor, which says a lot about this film's historical priorities. The adventure is filled with characters and tropes recognizable from a childhood spent devouring adventure romps from another age, like Biggles or The Thirty-Nine Steps. The sort of ripping yarns in which heroes are dashing amateurs and villains are "saturnine," looming from the shadows in Homburg hats while a shadowy mastermind sitting atop a mountain directs a satanic council of crude national stereotypes. They don't make 'em like that anymore, and for good reason. The problem is that a lovingly re-created pastiche of these outdated and questionable attitudes only repeats those attitudes unless there's also a clear effort to skewer, undermine and reject them. For example, it's important to look at who lives, who dies, who wins and how they do so. Some filmmakers seem to think it's enough to play it straight and trust that a modern audience sees outdated attitudes for what they are. But that's an abdication of artistic responsibility.

The King's Man offers enough sly winks to signal it knows what it's doing playing with these dubious old tropes. But usually that comes in the form of making Gemma Arterton pop up and do something hilariously badass, only to then sideline her again. The hero is motivated by the death of a woman, and there's a lengthy sequence built around the heroes' panic that they may be seduced into having sex with -- gasp! -- a man.

Considering how loudly The King's Man proclaims its central point -- politicians are all bastards -- it's also oddly muddled in its convictions. Instead of rejecting the horribly unequal privilege of aristocracy, the film venerates Ralph Fiennes' saintly nobleman even when he casually takes the kind of unilateral violent action we're apparently meant to despise in the villains.

As in the earlier Kingsman films, instead of true equality, the luckiest working-class characters are offered the trappings of aristocracy. In this film, the Kingsman spy ring begins as a network of domestic servants. Some of these characters are given names (a decent enough indicator of whether a movie values a character), but many common folk are given short shrift. The Russian revolution, for example, is portrayed not as a working-class movement but a murderous mob. And the core concept of the series is built around the titular tailor's shop, but it turns out these aristocrats just moved in and took over -- we never see them involving or even asking the people working there. King Arthur's table may be round, but not everyone gets a seat.

You might say I'm reading too much into a film that also features Rasputin having a dance-fight against a spy with no trousers on, but this whole series is explicitly founded on such questions of class. Still, even if aspects of it don't hold up to scrutiny, I have to say I was entertained as it pinballed from moment to moment. Brazen and bizarre, The King's Man is rarely boring.

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The King's Man is a deranged spy prequel kicking history in the face - CNET

Fashion, clothing, textiles, accessories, and costume have served a critical role in protest movements throughout history. Clothing often offers the most basic opportunity for groups to rebel: a simple, mundane item that can symbolize discontent. British punks took the humble safety pin from the household sewing kit, punched it through an earlobe, and headed out to face a bleak 1970s postwar world in which they had no voice. Male farmers in rural India wore their wives saris while staging sit-ins on railroad tracks against government neglect. American suffragettes made and wore dresses from old newspapers printed with pro-voting slogans.

The cover of Newsweeks May 11th 1992 issue. [Image: Newsweek]During the L.A. Riots in 1992, protesters painted, ripped, or stenciled their T-shirts, using clothing as a canvas to create community around their rebellion. Los Angeles college student and Navy veteran Mark Craig threw on a T-shirt during a night of civil disobedience that ended up with him grabbing the national spotlight on the cover of Newsweek. His T-shirt was displayed in the California African American Museum as part of an L.A. Riots retrospective: the object (T-shirt) plus the meaning (social discontent) combine to create a historical artifact with a legacy.

Clothing provides a compelling canvas for registering rebellion: a super visual, universal, portable cue that can be photographed, distributed, copied, and built on by future protesters across languages and cultures. When the Trump administration came to power in the United States, protests reverberated worldwide. During the four years that Donald Trump held office, it seemed that each day brought a new image gone viral: of the Womens Marches, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the #MeToo movement, the Gilets Jaunes demonstrations in France, Kamala Harris wearing all white for her vice presidential acceptance speech, anti-Brexit protesters holding satirical puppets of politicians, citizens in Hong Kong marching under a sea of yellow umbrellas, Nigerian activists rallying against police violence. Protest has once again entered the zeitgeist. And as long as there have been protest movements, citizens, activists, and freedom fighters have used art and design to amplify, elevate, articulate, and define their causes.

Just hats alone can tell the story of design and material culturefrom the iconic Black Panthers beret to Gandhis humble topi hat, from Caribbean rebel headwraps to French World War II protest millinery. In 2016, Jayna Zweiman and Krista Suh launched the Pussyhat Project, and the soft knitted pink pussyhats went head-to-head with cardinal-red MAGA baseball caps reading MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN in white embroidery.

The year 2017 brought the crisp white bonnet from the hit TV show The Handmaids Tale, worn by activists as an homage to the original costumes designed by Ane Crabtree. The #MeToo movement celebrated the handmaid costumes, with activists buying versions of the costume online or making them at home, and took to the city streets and government buildings donning the eerie red dresses and white bonnets. The costumes were endlessly photographed and viscerally haunting. In 1951, art historian Quentin Bell wrote an article called The Incorrigible Habit. He forever tied phenomena like The Handmaids Tale costumes to activism and clothing: The history of dress is, to a very large extent, a history of protests.

[Photo: Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images]While the handmaid protesters wore custom dresses and bonnets, the MAGA hat was a factory-made, synthetic-dyed symbol of American masculinity and national sport in the form of the baseball hat. In his 2015 New York Times Magazine article on the history of the baseball cap, writer Troy Patterson concludes, The hat is not a fashion item, its something larger, and more primal: the headpiece of American folk costume.

The baseball cap started as a sports uniform but became a symbol of the common American citizen. Trumps marketing team took it to another level when they propelled such a humble accessory into political history.

[Photo: Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group/Getty Images]For anyone trying to make sense of our turbulent times, design can be a guide, reflecting our world back at us, uncovering deeper meanings, transforming words and thoughts into visuals. Through photographs, art, engravings, painting, and sculpture, we can see dress as a visually engaging and historically compelling exploration of many types of rebellion: formalized protests; civil disobedience; peaceful and violent uprisings; informal, impromptu, and covert resistance. Social activism, sit-ins, flash mobs, boycotts, street theater, and industrial action all reveal ways in which we use protest in the service of progress and change.

Although different countries use protest in unique ways, protests across time periods reveal that the human need to be heard is centuries old and also utterly current. Crucial, pivotal movements for Indigenous rights, civil rights, climate change awareness, pay equity, womens rights, gender equality, and disability rights have altered the course of society. A protester sacrifices their safety and personal freedom to rebeland on their backs are the clothes that will become symbols of the revolution. These tools have served as markers in time, documenting the ephemeral moments of movements, cementing them in history for future generations.

Universal themes run deep through the history of dresssubversion, conformity, imitation, confrontation, uniformity, appropriation, shock, nudity, fear, and parodyand provide common ground for all human expression. Creating new fashions or distinctive garments and accessories has given dissenters of all nations a strong nonverbal tool, the mass use of which creates a powerful repeated image that can lodge in the minds of the public. Activists have used the whole spectrum of fashion, whether everyday dress and accessories, haute couture, or avant-garde dress, to further their causes. Costume and performance can be crucial tools for enhancing visibility for a cause. And finally, removing clothing as an act of protest can be as compelling as completely covering oneself.

[Image: courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]Cultures throughout history have used clothing, accessories, and costumes as a catalyst in the struggle for social change, and regular, everyday people have harnessed this visual power to heighten their message. Abolitionist and Underground Railroad hero Harriet Tubman, born in 1822, came from enslaved origins, but her clothing tells stories just as momentous as those of Louis XIV, the 18th century king of France. Tubman wore humble, utilitarian clothes as she guided slaves to freedommens overcoats, sturdy wool hats, hobnail boots. In stark contrast, Louis XIV, sometimes called Louis Couture, was known for his ferocious love of the finest clothes, accessories, wigs, and jewels available. He famously gave clothing one of its biggest compliments, declaring that fashion is the mirror of history.

From Dressing the Resistance: The Visual Language of Protest Through History by Camille Benda, published by Princeton Architectural Press. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher.

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From women's suffrage to Black Lives Matter, the radical history of how clothing has defined protests - Fast Company