JFK+50 TOP POST #3
Knoxville, Tennessee (JFK+50) Today we continue a review of the ten most popular posts of our JFK+50 blog since we began in November 2010. This review will include updates and revisions of the original posts.
IKE DISCUSSES "FALLING DOMINO" EFFECT
April 7, 2011, Washington, D.C.(JFK+50) At his news conference fifty-seven years ago today, April 7, 1954, at the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said the impending fall of French Indo-China to the communists could create a "falling domino effect" in Southeast Asia.
Communist Vietnamese nationalists under Ho Chi Minh were on the verge of victory over the French in Vietnam.
President Eisenhower said:
"You have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences."*
One month later, the French lost the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and North Vietnam was created as a communist state. South Vietnam remained free.
Later presidents including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon believed in the so-called "domino theory" and used it to justify increases in American military involvement in Southeast Asia.
DAG HAMMARSKJOLD ELECTED UN SECRETARY GENERAL
April 7, 2011, New York City (JFK+50) Fifty-eight years ago today, April 7, 1953, the son of a former prime minister of Sweden, Dag Hammarskjold was elected secretary-general of the United Nations.
Hammarskjold served as UN Secretary-General until his accidental death in September 1961. Having been re-elected in 1957, he directed the UN peace keeping role in a civil war in the Congo. He was en route to the Congo when his plane crashed. He was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Grave marker of Dag Hammarskjold
Photo by Conny Odengrund (2006)
JFK WANTS TO HELP PRESERVE EGYPTIAN TEMPLES
April 7, 2011, Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Fifty years ago today, April 7, 1961, President John F. Kennedy sent a letter to Congress recommending the United States participate in a UNESCO campaign to preserve ancient temples and monuments in the Nile Valley of Egypt.
The campaign was designed to save sites threatened by construction of the Aswan Dam.
In his letter, President Kennedy suggests that this effort is...
"in the best interests of the United States as well as of Egypt."
In 1965, Mrs. John F.Kennedy arranged to have Egypt's Temple of Dendur brought to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Temple of Dendur
Metropolitan Museum
New York City
Photo by Roner Perry (2006)
April 7, 2011, Chicago, Illinois (JFK+50) Political observers around the nation have observed forty-eight years ago this week that Mayor Richard J. Daley's re-election as Mayor of Chicago was a good sign for President John F. Kennedy in his bid for re-election as President of the United States in 1964.
Mayor Daley had been instrumental in JFK's success in Chicago in 1960 and his narrow victory in Illinois.
President Kennedy with Mayor Daley
JFK+50 NOTE
The original post titled "IKE DISCUSSES FALLING DOMINO EFFECT" has received more than 23,000 hits since April 7, 2011.
