Historical Planet

Thursday 30 January 2020

Meeting of the Italian and French drilling parties during the construction of the Mont Blanc Tunnel, 14 August 1962

Mutt, a French Bulldog and member of the U.S. 11th Engineers in WW1, he delivered cigarettes throughout the front lines, 1918

Western tourist pays to try on samurai armour, 1890

Life before AutoCAD - Urban Designers in the 1950's

Tuesday 28 January 2020

Bohdan Stefan Winiarski

Bohdan Winiarski was elected president of the International Court of Justice by his fourteen fellow judges on April 5, 1961. Bohdan Winiarski of Poland will continue to preside over the judicial arm of the United Nations until 1964. Winiarski has been a judge of the court since it became operative in 1946, succeeding the Permanent Court of International Justice of the League of Nations.

He was president of the Bank of Poland with the Polish government-in-exile during World War II. Before the war, he had done legal work with the League of Nations and had taught law at Poznan University. Bohdan Stefan Winiarski was born on April 27, 1884, at Bohdanowo. The palatinate of Bialystok, Poland, into a family of landed gentry and officials.

His parents were Stanislaw K. A. Winiarski, a forestry official, and Jadwiga (Mystkowska) Winiarski. After completing his secondary schooling in Lomza, he studied at the universities of Warsaw, Krakow, Paris, and Heidelberg. He received his doctorate in law in 1910. After lecturing for three years (1911-1914) at the Polish School of Political Science in Krakow.

He was called up by the Russian army, in which he served for two years (1915- 17). Secretary of the legal section of the Polish National Committee in Paris from 1917, he was a legal adviser to the Polish delegation at the Paris Peace Conference (1919-20). A member of the Polish delegations to many international conferences after World War I.

Winiarski became particularly involved in the work of the League of Nations, which emerged from the Paris Peace Conference. He was in the delegations to the first three assemblies of the League (1920, 1921, 1922). Winiarski was a member of the League's permanent commission un communications and transit from 1921 to 1927.

After that, he was vice-president of the commission from 1924 to 1926. He was also an assessor of the Permanent Court of International Justice, set up under the League, for communications and transit questions. A member of the international Oder River commission, he was a Polish agent at the court when the Oder dispute came before the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1929.

He was a professor at the Academy of International Law in The Hague in 1933 and became a member of the permanent Conference of Higher Studies there in 1936. Beginning in 1925, he was president of the League's committee on inland navigation law. Meanwhile Winiarski was active in both political and academic life in Poland.

Therefore, from 1924 to 1927 he was a member of the government commissary for the liquidation of German property. As a deputy in the Polish Diet (1928-1935), he opposed the Pilsudski regime. Beginning in 1921, he taught at Poznan University. He was a professor of public international law in the university's faculty of law beginning in 1922 and dean of the faculty of law from 1936 to 1939.

He was arrested by the Germans in September 1939, Winiarski was held as a hostage until November. Shortly thereafter he was interned with his family and his property was confiscated. Early in 1940 he escaped from Poland and offered his services to General Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile.

Winiarski was president of the London-based Bank of Poland from 1941 to 1946. So, he taught international law in the Polish faculty of law at Oxford University from 1944 to 1946. In 1944 and 1945 Winiarski was a member of the interallied committee that, under the chairmanship of Sir William Malkin. Where he was considered the future of the Permanent Court of International Justice.

The charter of the United Nations, signed at the United Nations Conference on International The organization, held in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, stated that "the International Court of Justice shall be the principal judicial organ of the United Nations."

Integral with the charter was a statute, based upon the statute of the old court, specifying the functions of the new one. Bohdan Winiarski was one of the fifteen judges elected to the International Court in February 1946. Election, as always, was by the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations, voting separately.

The Security Council and the General Assembly were then during their first meetings, held in London. Since his original term was only three years. Winiarski was re-elected to a the nine-year term on October 22, 1948. In the 1948 election, when there were forty-one candidates, Winiarski was elected in the General Assembly (where the the required absolute majority was thirty votes) on the fourth ballot and in the Security Council (where six votes were required) on the first ballot.

Bohdan Stefan Winiarski was again elected to a nine-year term in 1957. His fellow judges elected Winiarski president of the court on April 5, 1961, succeeding Green H. Hackworth of the United States. At the same time, Ricardo J. Alfaro of Panama was elected vice-president. Their terms are for three years.

As president, Winiarski takes precedence over the other court members but has no more power than they in voting on cases and expressing opinions. The International Court of Justice hears only cases in which the parties are states. It may also hand down advisory opinions.

Even though the effectiveness of the court has been seriously limited by the optional nature of its jurisdiction. So, by 1958 thirty-eight states had agreed to submit to the the judgment of the court all disputes about the interpretation of treaties, the application of international law, breaches of obligation, and damages payable for such breaches.

The prestige of the the court has been somewhat reduced by the fact that it does not exercise jurisdiction over any case that the United States chooses to consider a "domestic" matter. Since Winiarski took his seat on it in 1946, the the court has ruled in thirty-eight cases and issued eleven advisory opinions.

During 1950 it handed down several decisions to settle a dispute between the United States and France over the rights of United States citizens in Morocco. In the dispute between Great Britain (on behalf of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) and Iran in 1952, the court ruled that Iran was not violating any rights coming under the court's jurisdiction. Then the parties eventually came to an agreement between themselves.

In April 1960 the court handed down three decisions on a right-of-passage dispute between India and Portugal. Because Portugal had the right to transport civil officials, private persons, and ordinary goods across Indian territory to two Portuguese villages within India. It did not have the right to so transporting military forces and supplies. However, an Indian blockade had not violated the rights of passage legitimately belonging to Portugal.

Moreover, in 1960 the the court also settled an old border dispute between Honduras and Nicaragua with a decision favorable to Honduras and accepted by Nicaragua. In 1957, after seizing the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government pledged itself to keep the the international character of the canal according to the Convention of 1888.

They formally accepted as compulsory the jurisdiction of the court in all conflicting legal interpretations of the Convention and other treaties involving the canal. Besides settling disputes between nations, the court advises the General Assembly, the Security Council, or agencies of the United Nations on matters of international law or treaty interpretations.

A prolific writer on constitutional law, particularly in its historical aspects in Poland and France, Bohdan Winiarski has written even more extensively on international law, particularly as related to aviation, legitimate defense, com- N. V. Ziegler.

The communications, arbitration, disarmament, and inland navigation. Among his numerous books are Principes generaux du droit fluvial international, lectures on international river law given by Winiarski at the Academy of International Law in The Hague in 1933 and published in Paris in 1934.

That was part three of volume forty-five of the academy's “Recueil des cours” and Wybor irodel do nauki prawa miedzynarodoivego, published in Warsaw in 1938. Bohdan Winiarski married Wanda Markowska on April 5, 1913. They have one son, Maciej, and two daughters, Krystyna and Magdalena. Bohdan Stefan Winiarski died on 4 December 1969 in Poznan.

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Sunday 26 January 2020

World's First Ever Airmail

The success of the aeroplane led quickly to the introduction of airmail. United States in the vanguard and on 17 February 1911, Fred Wiseman made the first official airmail flight.

He was carrying three letters between Petaluma and Santa Rosa California. However on the next day, the French pilot Henri Pequet carried 6,500 letters a distance of 13km from Allahbad to Naini in India. That same year, on September 9, the first scheduled airmail postal service was inaugurated between Hendon, North London and Windsor.

British Troops stationed in Germany after the First World War received mail by air. In the 1920’s the RAF was responsible for developing routes for airmail to the Middle East. The French airmail service Aerpostale was inaugurated in 1918 at the instigation of Pierre Latecoere, a military aircraft manufacture who had ambitions to expand into commercial aviation.

In September 1919, he launched a regular service, called simply ”La Ligne”, (The Line), between Toulouse and Morocco, which he gradually extended to Dakar in Senegal (then known as French West Africa). Among its early pilots was Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who later became famous for books such as Night Flight and Southern Mail, recounting his flying exploits, and his children’s Novella the Little Prince?

Conditions for long distance mail pilots were grueling they had to contend with engine failures, appalling weather and even attacks by hostile tribesmen. Some downed airmen were captured and held to ransom. The heroes of “The Line” endured such hardships guided by the service motto: the mail must get through!

One of famous pilot Antoine de Saint Exupery and Henri Guillaumet posed with an Aeropostale Latecoere-28 monoplane, mainstay of the French airmail service.

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One of famous pilot Antoine de Saint Exupery and Henri Guillaumet posed with an Aeropostale Latecoere-28 monoplane, mainstay of the French airmail service.

The World Takes Wing – The Adventure of Flight

The first intrepid aviators who lifted off in heavier than air machines were all too aware of the huge gulf between the urge to fly and the strenuous, dangerous business of keeping a plane aloft. But thanks to the risks they took in testing out new technology, aircraft quickly improved until they were safe and reliable enough to carry fare-paying passengers.

Instrument panels on the earliest aeroplanes were rudimentary in the extreme. To get their bearings and judge conditions as they flew, pilots simply kept their eyes peeled and looked around them. On clear, days using observation with the naked eye, it was relatively easy to tell if the plane was flying straight and level, and to judge manoeuvres involving climbing, descent and banking with reasonable accuracy. If pilots lost their way, all they needed to do was drop down low enough to pick up a railway line.

Then follow it to a station and read and large signs on the platforms. But the moment a plane flew into cloud, visibility disappeared and the risk of an accident increased dramatically.

Breakthrough in Aerial Navigation

When making his cross-channel flight in 1909, the only instrument and board Bleriot’s Type XI monoplane was a fuel gauge. But before long, cockpits began to fill with instruments that made flying a less haphazard affair. From 1941 onwards, most aircraft were equipped with an airspeed indicator, an altimeter, a rev counter a thermometer, a clock and a roller map. Radios were introduced very early on, but their usefulness was limited as aerials that would allow anything but very short range communication were too heavy.

The answer was a radio receiver and directional antenna linked to a dial to tell the pilot or navigator where incoming radio compasses were fitted with a small electric motor that kept the antenna turning constantly.

As night flying became more commonplace, well-used air routes were marked with beacons along their entire course. But again, this system only really worked in fair weather conditions.

The first airport serving London was at Croydon, which opened to commercial traffic in 1920. However, in 1933 to cater for the growth in air travel, the Air Ministry approved commercial flights from Gatwick. Heathrow was opened in 1946.

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Saturday 18 January 2020

Oblique aerial view looking north-northwestwards of the island of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland, in August 1966,

Oblique aerial view looking north-northwestwards of the island of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland, in August 1966, showing the fishing town of Vestmannaeyjar, the east-west-trending harbor in the background, and the extinct volcano Helgafell rising to 741 ft in the right center of the island. On January 23, 1973, lava began to pour from a 0.9-mi north-northwest-trending fissure to the east (right) of Helgafell. Eldfell eventually grew to be similar in height to Helgafell, 0.6 mi to the northeast.

View on July 23, 1973, north across homes partially buried by tephra in the eastern part of Vestmannaeyjar. The lava flows loom in the background. Gases that are moving through the tephra rise from the house on the right. The houses were eventually exhumed and restored.

View on July 23, 1973, southeast from dock area in the northern part of Vestmannaeyjar toward edge of lava flow where it stopped against and between two fish-factory buildings. Two boys can be seen in the right background sweeping up the tephra. By July 1974 the lava had been completely removed and restoration of the factories had begun.

View on July 7, 1974, southeast from dock area in the northern part of Vestmannaeyjar after removal of lava flow which had stopped against and between two fish-factory buildings.

View to the south from Vestmannaeyjar's outer harbor on May 4, 1975. Seawater is being sprayed directly onto the lava flow front to arrest infilling of the harbor entrance.

A panoramic view east-southeast across the fishing port of Vestmannaeyjar on May 5, 1973. Dark, tephra-covered ground is apparent, with lava flows into the town and harbor in the left background.A panoramic view east-southeast across the fishing port of Vestmannaeyjar on May 5, 1973. Dark, tephra-covered ground is apparent, with lava flows into the town and harbor in the left background.

A panoramic view east-southeast across the fishing port of Vestmannaeyjar on May 5, 1973. Dark, tephra-covered ground is apparent, with lava flows into the town and harbor in the left background.

On May 4, 1973, workmen laid additional pipes to carry seawater up onto the lava flow front and tephra bulwark to cool and harden the still-flowing lava behind the chilled lava margin.

Oblique aerial view in early March 1973 of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. Steam rises from lava-cooling operations on land and from lava entering the sea (photo by Gudmundur Sigfússon. Courtesy of Sólarfilma).Oblique aerial view in early March 1973 of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. Steam rises from lava-cooling operations on land and from lava entering the sea (photo by Gudmundur Sigfússon. Courtesy of Sólarfilma).

Oblique aerial view in early March 1973 of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. Steam rises from lava-cooling operations on land and from lava entering the sea (photo by Gudmundur Sigfússon. Courtesy of Sólarfilma).