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Organ and tissue donation is a critical process for prolonging life. At the time of writing, there are nearly 118,000 individuals waiting for an organ transplant to live healthier, more productive lives. For some people with end-stage organ failure, it is a matter of life and death. Add to these numbers the thousands more whose lives will be improved through tissue and cornea donation and transplants that can help them move better, see better, and live better and the figure for organ and tissue donation will continue to rise.

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In 1930, Communist ideology was gaining popularity: membership in the Communist Party rose from 6,822 in 1930 to 66,000 in 1939. This decade shift was sandwiched between the first red scare from 1917 to 1920, and the second red scare which took place from 1947 through the 1950s. During this epoch of the Great Depression, in March of 1930, the Communist Party organized a mass unemployment protest in Union Square of New York City. Around 35,000 people attended the demonstration, which turned from peaceful to violent. 

The group of protestors went to City Hall to “demand a hearing from Mayor Walker.” Around 1,000 police officers used batons to break up the crowd. A number of arrests were made, including four main leaders: William Z. Foster, Israel Amter, Robert Minor, and Harry Raymond. These four individuals, along with one other man, Joseph Lester, were arrested on the charge of unlawful assembly and inciting a riot. While the men were kept in the detention pen at the police station, violence broke out, leading the four to also be charged with felonious assault. 

Grover Whalen served as the New York City Police Commissioner during this time. Whalen claimed “police spies” had infiltrated the Communist organization in New York City. The International Labor Defense, which was the legal defense organization for the communist party in the United States, declared they would unearth Whalen’s spy system. The defense for Foster, Amter, Minor, and Raymond claimed that Whalen’s secret police hid among the protestors and were the ones to incite a riot. On August 8, 1930, the parole board set the terms for the four arrested men. Foster, Amter, and Minor served six months, while Raymond served ten due to a past criminal history which included “grand larceny and robbery while armed.”

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Tom Mooney and Warren Billings were two men framed as being the perpetrators in a deadly bombing in San Francisco in 1916. At the time, tension was high between labor unions and businesses. The United States was preparing for the possibility of joining World War I, and so they had a large “Preparedness Day” event with a parade through San Francisco’s streets. A suitcase bomb went off during the parade, killing ten and gravely injuring forty others. Detectives and the district attorney’s office were on the side of the chamber of commerce, and used a list of leftists “trouble-makers” who were in town to determine who to arrest for the bombing. Tom Mooney and Warren Billings were labor activists in town that day, and they were arrested. Tom Mooney was sentenced to death which was later commuted to life in prison, while Warren Billings was also sentenced to life in prison. 

In 1920, the confession of Detective Draper Hand, involved in the Mooney case, changed everything. He confessed the entire case framed Tom Mooney. He either bribed or intimidated all the witnesses so that they would lie on the stand, and he coached them on exactly what to say. Detective Hand even took the key witness, Mr. Oxman, to the police station and showed him a car so that he could testify to seeing the car driven on the day. Mooney and Billings asked for a retrial after this new evidence came to light. The evidence sparked protests and outrage, and probes into the trial lasted for over twenty years while Mooney and Billings were kept in prison. In 1939, both men were released with Mooney being pardoned and Billings being paroled. Billings was eventually pardoned in the 1960s. It was determined that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to convict either man, and it is still unknown who was responsible for the suitcase bomb in 1916.

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The statue of John Alexander Logan, installed July 22, 1897, is located in Grant (Ulysses) Park in Chicago, Illinois. The bronze figure of the general was created by the artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, while the horse he rides was sculpted by Alexander Phimister Proctor. On the day the statue was instated, there was a two-hour dedication ceremony, gun salute, and a parade of ten thousand marchers. In the evening, the widowed Mrs. Logan was welcomed with a fireworks display followed by a band concert. Mrs. Logan planned to move her husband’s body to the tomb where the monumental sculpture is located, but the move never happened. The tomb stands empty to this day.

John Alexander Logan was a war hero and political figure who lived from 1826 to 1886. He, as the leader of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization for Union Army veterans, was key in establishing Memorial Day as a federal holiday. Logan started his military service in the Mexican-American war before studying law and serving a number of terms as an Illinois State Representative for the Democratic party. He served as a United States Congressman, and then joined the Civil War as rank colonel. He reached the rank of general during his service. After the Civil War, Logan changed his party affiliation and became a Republican representative in both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate. Logan “became well known for supporting the rights of former slaves and of women.” In 1884, he was nominated for Vice President on John Blaine’s presidential ticket, but was not elected. A number of streets and towns were named in his honor after the Civil War, and the Logan Museum was established in his hometown in Illinois.

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Harry B. Hershey was born in Mifflin, Ohio, and lived from 1885 to 1967. During his lifetime, he was an attorney, mayor, and Illinois Supreme Court Justice. In 1909, he earned his Applied Baccalaureate Degree, A.B. Degree, from the University of Illinois. Three years later, he graduated from the University of Chicago with his J.D. Degree. 

After passing his bar exam, the city of Taylorville elected him as the city attorney, followed by him serving two terms as Christian County’s state attorney. A couple of years later, he was elected the Taylorville Mayor. Taylorville is a small city in central Illinois with a little over 10,000 residents. Taylorville is the seat of Christian County, and is the only city in the county.

Hershey was well-known at the time while running for Governor of Illinois in 1940 as the Democratic candidate. He lost to Dwight H. Green, the Republican candidate. Hershey held several other state government positions in the following years before being appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1951 as a justice. He served for sixteen years on the Illinois Supreme Court and served one term as the chief justice.

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Scotland's national flower is the thistle, a prickly weed with very long thorns and a light purple flower. Thistle was used as a royal symbol for the first time in the year 1470, when King James the Third issued silver coins imprinted with the plant's image. The Scottish royalty established The Order of the Thistle in the late 17th century, which is still the highest honor British royalty can bestow onto Scots. The plant also served as inspiration for the famous Scottish poem written by Hugh MacDiarmid, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. 

Planning a trip to Scotland soon? Be on the lookout for this prickly wild flower growing everywhere!

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Iomega was a data storage company established in 1980. It is now known as LenovoEMC after a takeover in 2008 by EMC, the largest data-storage provider in the world. Iomega had over one thousand employees and was first located in the state of Utah. The company was present at a number of trade show events during the early 2000s, before the 2008 takeover.

Some of Iomega’s well-known products included REV Drives, Zip Drives, HDD Desktop Hard Drive, Iomega Automatic Backup software, Iomega NAS servers, and Iomega iStorage. iStorage allowed customers to access online storage with an unlimited capacity at any time, any place. The company also provided complete data recovery services for both customers and businesses who lost data because of “hardware failure, file corruption or media damage.” Iomega provided services to four different regions: North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Africa, and Asia Pacific. 

LenovoEMC and Iomega NAS products were discontinued by Lenovo in 2018. In 2020, a hacker group started wiping Lenovo NAS devices and holding the contents for ransom. NAS/LenovoEMC devices have been targeted with malware and ransomware a number of other times in recent years.

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Universal Button Company, established in 1962, was a manufacturer of fabricated metal products, including badges and emblems. Located in Bethnal Green in London’s East End, they were responsible for producing some of the most iconic badges of the late 1970s. In honor of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, political activist Sherri Yanowitz created a badge to mark the occasion. The “Stuff the Jubilee” button was an anti-monarchy protest on the cost of the event as the county’s unemployment rose and public funding was cut. Sherri Yanowitz recalls,  “I ordered 4000 badges from the Universal Button Company in, they sort of laughed at me. The same company had the order for hundreds of thousands of pro-monarchy items. In the end, we sold over 40,000 in less than three months.” In 1977, the company received an order to produce The Sex Pistols' “God Save the Queen” badges but refused due to their loyalty to the Queen.

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In April of 1971, McDonald’s Restaurants sponsored a Barnum Festival Booster to raise money. The Ringmaster of the circus at the time was Charles L. Batchelder. There was a Booster Button Committee, and the button sales revenue supported festival events. The booster was advertised in the local newspaper with a photo of McDonald Representative R.C. Taylor pinning one of the buttons to the Ringmaster’s lapel. 

The Barnum Festival in 1971 took place in Bridgeport, Connecticut at Seaside Park. The Festival had vendor stalls, small game stalls, and rides for festival attendees to enjoy. There was a ferris wheel, a pendulum boat ride, a paratrooper ride, and more. Attendees could win cute stuffed animal prizes at the game stalls. There was also a parade down the streets of town with many musical bands, the ringmaster, and many more performers. There was a mummers band in plumed red and white costumes, and cyclists on bicycles. There were elaborate parade floats and horse drawn carts. Clowns ran past with a red fire engine. Many citizens young and old lined the streets to watch the parade go by.