Net neutrality restored

This is not 1939 related but it’s important. I have mentioned it twice before:

When it was at risk of being eliminated: https://1939socal.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/net-neutrality-day/

And when it actually was eliminated: https://1939socal.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/end-of-net-neutrality/ .

Now it’s been restored. Hooray! See the details here: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-04-26/after-a-years-long-pause-the-fcc-resurrects-network-neutrality-a-boon-for-consumers .

Orchard frost protection using light bulbs

UCLA collections image via https://groups.io/g/RailroadCitrusIndustryModelingGroup/topic/104226356 . Photographer not identified.

Quinter Bashore holds a therapeutic lamp to help his orchard in Covina, 1939. Bashore stands on top of a barrel reaching above his head to adjust one of the lamps attached to a row of wires above his orchard.

Quinter Bashore has discovered a way to keep his orchards from being affected by cold weather due to his installation of 128 lights, 260 watts each, the kind used by physicians in electrotherapy.

Rex, the gambling ship

In the 1930s gambling interests anchored ships in the ocean just beyond three miles from Santa Monica. Gaming was illegal in the state of California but wasn’t prohibited in federal waters. The Rex, beginning in 1938, became successful by catering to regular folks instead of big spenders but the operation became too big for the state to ignore. Threats of legal action cleared out the competing ships but the owner of the Rex held on until Johnny Law surrounded it to lay seige in 1939. In about a week it was over and later the gambling interests lost in court.

The story is more complicated than this and is a fascinating short read: https://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi06ee.php .