todaysdocument:

War Department General Order 143: Ordering the Creation of the U.S. Colored Troops, May 22, 1863

The outbreak of the Civil War set off a rush by free black men to enlist in U.S. military units. They were turned away, however, because a Federal law dating from 1792 barred Negroes from bearing arms for the U.S. Army. The Lincoln administration wrestled with the idea of authorizing the recruitment of black troops, concerned that such a move would prompt the border states to secede.  

However, following the Emancipation Proclamation and faced with dwindling white volunteers, black recruitment was pursued in earnest. Volunteers from South Carolina, Tennessee, and Massachusetts filled the first authorized black regiments. Recruitment was slow until black leaders such as Frederick Douglass encouraged black men to become soldiers to ensure eventual full citizenship. (Two of Douglass’s own sons contributed to the war effort.) Volunteers began to respond, and in May 1863 the Government established the Bureau of Colored Troops to manage the burgeoning numbers of black soldiers. By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10 percent of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army, and another 19,000 served in the Navy.

via Our Documents

Stephen Colbert Salutes U.Va.’s Class of 2013 (by UniversityofVirginia)

Source: youtube.com

A Desire Named Streetcar | OnEarth Magazine

[…] Suddenly streetcars — those clanging, clattering, spark-emitting icons of public transit’s past — are among the hottest and most coveted components of public transit’s future. Right now the list of cities looking to introduce new streetcar lines or extend existing ones reads like a back-of-the-envelope tally by members of the NBA’s expansion-team task force, circa 1978: in addition to Charlotte, there’s Dallas, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Fort Lauderdale, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Tucson, among others.

As different as those streetcar-crazy cities are from one another, they have at least three things in common. First is their desire to breathe new life into somewhat moribund downtowns or other neighborhoods where the potential for economic activity is somewhat greater than the actual level of economic activity. Second is their desire to attract and retain the well-educated millennials who make up the tech-savvy “creative class,” but who have largely abandoned or foregone their cities in favor of those in California, the Northeast, and the Pacific Northwest. And third is their belief that streetcars, somehow, are absolutely key to the fulfillment of both these desires.[…]

theatlanticcities:

“I hope that viewers of my website would know the character of each escalator, and would pay attention to escalators in their cities.” -Miha Tamura

Today, Eric Jaffe introduces us to the woman behind the Tokyo Escalator blog, Miha Tamura. She’s on a mission to save escalators from obscurity, documenting them in order to show how extraordinary they can be. 

Tamura grew up in Kanazawa, where there are very few escalators besides local department stores. She currently lives in Tokyo, a city with plenty of escalators to keep fueling her fascination.

Read: Photographing Tokyo’s Coolest Escalators

[Images: Miha Tamura/Tokyo Escalator]

(via theatlantic)

Source: theatlanticcities

(via Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20)

Clinical psychologist Meg Jay has a bold message for twentysomethings: Contrary to popular belief, your 20s are not a throwaway decade. In this provocative talk, Jay says that just because marriage, work and kids are happening later in life, doesn’t mean you can’t start planning now. She gives 3 pieces of advice for how twentysomethings can re-claim adulthood in the defining decade of their lives.

In her book “The Defining Decade,” Meg Jay suggests that many twentysomethings feel trivialized during what is actually the most transformative — and defining — period of our adult lives.

Source: ted.com

From Winterfell to King's Landing: How the cartography of Game of Thrones explains the world. | Foreign Policy

In the long and steamy affair between fantasy and cartography, certainly the most mesmerizing image of recent vintage is the dynamic beauty kissed alive by the title sequence of Game of Thrones. At the start of each episode, the viewer is strapped to a rollercoaster and swept across its alternate world. The camera dips and climbs vertiginously over a map of fictional lands and their unfamiliar shores, halting at crucial spots for cities, castles, and magical trees to shoot up from the earth, self-assembling like 22nd-century Ikea furniture.
Apart from enthralling map nuts, the opening sequence also sets the scene for the action to follow, using the map as an elaborate chessboard in mid-game and the castles its precariously positioned pieces. The zoomed-in views occasionally reveal more than location and situation: the charred husk of a fortress serves as a brief memento of its sacking. We’re not just reading a map, we’re playing spy satellite.

When Amtrak unveils the first of 70 new locomotives Monday at a plant in California, it will mark what the national passenger railroad service hopes will be a new era of better reliability, streamlined maintenance and better energy efficiency. On a broader scale, the new engines could well be viewed as emblematic of the improving financial health of Amtrak, which has long been dependent on subsidies from an often reluctant Congress. […] The new engines will be used on the Northeast Corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston and on Keystone Corridor trains that run between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pa. Three will be unveiled Monday before being sent out for testing. The first is due to go into service by this fall, and all 70 are expected to be in service by 2016. Amtrak awarded the contract in 2010 to Munich-based Siemens AG, which has made a big investment in the American rail industry over the last decade. The company makes about one of every three light rail vehicles in North America and is building light rail vehicles for Minneapolis, Houston and San Diego at the Sacramento plant where Amtrak’s locomotives are being produced. Among the improvements in the new locomotives are computers that can diagnose problems in real time and take corrective action and a braking system capable of generating 100 percent of the energy it uses back to the electric grid — similar to the way a hybrid automobile’s motor acts as a generator when braking, according to Michael Cahill, CEO for Siemens Rail Systems. That could produce energy savings of up to $300 million over 20 years, the company estimates.
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When Amtrak unveils the first of 70 new locomotives Monday at a plant in California, it will mark what the national passenger railroad service hopes will be a new era of better reliability, streamlined maintenance and better energy efficiency.

On a broader scale, the new engines could well be viewed as emblematic of the improving financial health of Amtrak, which has long been dependent on subsidies from an often reluctant Congress. […]

The new engines will be used on the Northeast Corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston and on Keystone Corridor trains that run between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pa. Three will be unveiled Monday before being sent out for testing. The first is due to go into service by this fall, and all 70 are expected to be in service by 2016.

Amtrak awarded the contract in 2010 to Munich-based Siemens AG, which has made a big investment in the American rail industry over the last decade. The company makes about one of every three light rail vehicles in North America and is building light rail vehicles for Minneapolis, Houston and San Diego at the Sacramento plant where Amtrak’s locomotives are being produced.

Among the improvements in the new locomotives are computers that can diagnose problems in real time and take corrective action and a braking system capable of generating 100 percent of the energy it uses back to the electric grid — similar to the way a hybrid automobile’s motor acts as a generator when braking, according to Michael Cahill, CEO for Siemens Rail Systems. That could produce energy savings of up to $300 million over 20 years, the company estimates.

Source: Yahoo!

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