Assumption @ 0

I was looking through a list of the important events of the 1900’s for some subject to base my project on when I suddenly came across the Orson Welles War of the Worlds Broadcast. I then remembered that Orson Welles also wrote Citizen Kane and I only knew that it was a very important and amazing film. I started to wonder at what else he wrote, what it might be about, what messages it might contain, and just who Orson Welles really was. I felt that the answers to these questions would not only give me insight into who Orson was but also his ways of thinking and how he perceiving the world. Those insights would, in turn help me better understand the way people think and act and help me in my struggle to understand why people do what they do.

I knew that there were a lot of things about Orson Welles that I didn’t know, and I wanted to know. So I decided the best way to start my quest was to list the things I did know in my head. I knew he was a movie producer and that he wrote Citizen Kane and was the mind behind the War of the Worlds broadcast. And then… That was it. That was all I knew and when I was finished my amount of knowledge was not only tiny but based alarmingly heavy on what I heard from others and not actual fact. I knew then that this was the subject I had to choose not just for my lack knowledge but for my interest in who exactly Orson Welles was and why he did the things he did.

    I wanted to know Orson’s background as well as his education. I wanted to know what books he had written and what  they were about. I also wished to know more about exactly what happened with the War of the Worlds broadcast. I remembered hearing about it and how it was a bit of a wake up call that helped people understand how powerful social media really was. I wondered exactly what it was that made all those people panic, what made them suddenly turn angry and turn on Orson Welles. What made the Government itself show up on the studios doorstep and accuse them of terrorism?

    I don’t remember when it was that I first began to gain an interest in space, but I was always amazed by the fact that there are millions of planets out there just like ours. In elementary I would always read books about the solar system and always thought about how those imagined how those planets would look like if I were to go there I often think about whether or not there is life outside of Earth. I believe there is, the universe is enormous and thinking that we’re the only ones is a bit depressing in my opinion. There are is infinite number of different possibilities of to what life may be like out there. When I think about this I constantly tend to imagine how a different world would look. Its hard for me to put in words how much the this blows my mind because its such a hard concept to grasp. But the way I look at it is that there is so much for us to learn out there, stuff that we can’t experience here on Earth. For example, a geologist might spend his or her whole life studying Earth because that’s what their passion is. But imagine how they would react when looking at another planet’s geological structure completely different than Earth’s, I can only assume that they would be left in awe when exposed to something like this. But if life does actually exists in some other part of the cosmos, it makes things even more complicated. There could be a place out there where there is no war, where everyone works together just for the sake of surviving. A place with completely different cultures than ours, different values and ethics. The list can go on forever.

    I can’t find a way to explain how thrilling space exploration is for me. To some people it might be scary, thinking of the unknown and all of the other mysteries out there. But I guess that’s what I find interesting, it makes you realize how unique we truly are. In scifi movies, for example in Avatar, you see someone’s picture of what a different world might look like. Some people think that this would never happen, that we would never visit other celestial bodies. But this may in fact become a reality one day.

Its amazing to see the great technological advancements we have done over the past one hundred years. To think about how we went from the first powered airplane flight to landing on the moon in the span of just 66 years is incredible. It makes me wonder how far we would be if we had the same mentality as we did during the space race. Even though there was heavy rivalry between both sides, they managed to accomplish so much. During that race we demonstrated what we are capable of achieving what seemed to be only science fiction during those times.

Although there were tensions between the U.S and the Soviet Union to see who had the superior spaceflight technology, it seems to me that they just wanted to show the world who was the superior figure. Even though they were racing for power, they both had a great success when it came to the things they did. The Soviets managed to be the first to send an artificial satellite to space and a man into orbit, but the U.S won the race by being the first to send humans to the moon. Now, there are many countries working together but recently we haven’t seen a lot of funding for these type of projects, which is very sad. Seeing the outcomes of the space race I believe that we can do the unimaginable. The space race was where it all began, it was the first big push for space exploration.

It amazes me to see how events unfolded and the way humanity has advanced. To see how empires rose and fell, to see how fundamental inventions like iron and glass were developed, and see how cultures change over time, that is why history is so fascinating to me; because of the progress that time contains and the changes made by man to the world. Yet, for some reason, war seems to especially draw my attention more than any other subject in time.  It might be the little kid inside of me imagining the battles that were fought, and glorifying them into something more, but ignoring the loss of life that happened due to war. The fact of the matter is that somewhere deep in the crevices of my mind, there is a primal part of me that is attracted to the violence, suppressing my own anger by projecting it onto the past.

I have always been an avid history buff, even in 3rd grade, I would pick up a history book that I could barely read and study it intensely, not only because of the illustrations, but for the content that it contained. In highschool, when my reading skills had developed and perhaps even surpassed some of my peers, I would open up multiple research pages on the internet and study a topic to the point of reading almost irrelevant information, yet I continued on. When I learned that my class was going to do a project about the 20th Century, I had such a vast amount ideas that I couldn’t decide on what to do. Should I do something to do with the military, something that changed the face of the world? What about inventions that saved millions of lives? Penicillin? Or how about the interstate system? After much consideration, I decided on General Patton, a famous General of World War II. To that end, I also have to think about my family’s service.

My family has had a history of military service so it comes to no surprise that I developed an

interest to further understand the sacrifices that, not only my family, but others have made. I even considered joining but due to some circumstances, I am no longer able to. So to thank the service that my father, uncles, grandfathers, great grandfather, and cousins served in, I find it important to remember their past. Yet still, all major military figures must be remembered as to not to repeat the same mistakes they made nor forget the hardships that were suffered by both troops and civilians.

With a cocksure grin on his face, General George S. Patton led his troops on the front.  Or that is how I imagine him. However, his aggressive personality caused friction between him and Allied Command, he was temporarily  relieved of his command because he slapped two of his men that suffered “battle fatigue”(possible PTSD), and was stubborn to a fault where he disagreed with his superiors. But Patton also had oratory skills to inspire his troops; his strategies won battles, and he earned the respect of his foes. It’s because of this complexity that I decided to study him with more than a quick glance over.

Yet the question still looms, why pick Patton and not some other General? As aforementioned, Patton had an arrogant air about him, but had a charisma he used during speeches to inspire troops. Unlike other famous Generals of the 20th century, Patton’s eccentric personality seems like it will transfer well into an art medium. The confidence he contained is very palpable even from the brief research I have done. Perhaps that is from how the media has portrayed him, a strong General that lead from the front and was butting heads with his superiors, a moniker of Old Blood and Guts, and called by the Leiter of Germany “that crazy cowboy General.” In short, I think that when I make my 20th century box, I will be very glad that I picked a person so fascinating as Patton and because that, I will be able to make something great.

Leslie De Loza

When I was first introduced to this project, I had no idea what I wanted to focus on. When we were doing our independent research, I was looking at the subjects that were up on Jeffs DP, and I was a little frustrated because I didn’t know about almost all of the people and events that were on there, but “organized crime” caught my eye. I have always enjoyed reading mystery books, specifically on crimes or murders and stuff like that, I remember hating to read anything and one day my cousin told me to read one of her books, The Boxer and the Spy on the back seat of her moms car as we were on our way to school. I didn’t want to read it because I always get car sick but she just kept insisting until I did. After reading a couple of pages, the book really caught my attention. The book was about a murder, and a boy that is training and learning how to box. It is a story of how all these random events lead the boxer to find out who it was that killed a guy from his school. When we finished reading that book, my cousin and I, started sharing mystery books and reading them together.

I recently started watching “criminal minds” and it is about FBI profilers and very interesting crimes, so,  all of that is really fresh on my mind, and it is something new and interesting to me so I figured why not learn about real crimes? After typing in, “organized crimes in google search and clicked on the “st. Valentines day Massacre” because it sounded like something really interesting since valentine's day is supposed to be all about love, and massacres aren’t really something you would think of when you hear the word Valentine. What interested me the most about the St. Valentines day massacre, was the plan that Jack McGurn had came up with. I never thought that gang killings or massacres had any actual planning behind them, I always thought it was an “in the moment” type of thing, so the when I read about this massacre, I was really surprised that the whole thing was actually planned out.

I don’t know much about Chicago's gang\ history in the 20th century but I do know that the 1920s chicago gangs started growing and spreading.  By the late 1920’s there were only two gangs left. The first gang was run by Al Capone and the other was lead by George Moran. One day, one of Al Capone's friend introduced him to a plan on how to destroy Moran and his gang.

Step one: Find Moran’s headquarters, step two: contract shooters from out of the area so that if there were any men spared they would not be able to identify the shooters as part of Al Capone’s gang, Step three: Get some men to be lookouts from apartments that were located next to the headquarters, Step four: Get a hold of a cop car and two cop uniforms, and last but not least, convince a known booze hijacker to call Moran and tell him about some “Old Log Cabin Whiskey” that he had gotten a hold of and that he would sell it to him for a really good price. Naturally, Moran agreed to seeing the booze hijacker in his headquarters the following day.

The gang was all gathered in the headquarters, then the lookouts that were located in the apartments next door, informed the shooters that someone that looked like Moran, so the shooters walk out of their positions and the others dressed in cop uniforms got out and went into the headquarters. Moran’s gang thought that it was a routine cop raid so they did as they were told and let the cops take their guns and faced the wall. They were all shot in the head and chest.

The men in cop uniforms walked out with the other gunmen in handcuffs so the people outside that heard the gunshots also thought it was just a raid. When the bodies were found, it was said that Moran was not any of them. It turned out that he had gotten there late and noticed the cop car so he decided to wait until they left.

Even though they didn’t get to kill Moran, I think that the plan was still really cool and well thought of. This is basically all I know so far about Chicago and its history of gangs in the 20th century but, I am interested in researching and learning about it. I would like to know how Al Capones and Morans gangs got to be the two biggest gangs in Chicago. The reason why I was so intrigued by this topic is because I have almost no knowledge on gangs and I thought that is I found the massacre and the plan and time but into it interesting, that there should be more things I find interesting.