Welcome to the Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections

"The "American Intervention in Northern Russia, 1918-1919," nicknamed the "Polar Bear Expedition," was a U.S. military intervention in northern Russia at the end of World War I. Since many of these soldiers originated from Michigan, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, an archive documenting Michigan history, has collected materials related to this event since the 1960s. The Bentley has amassed one of the largest groups of materials on this topic, consisting of over sixty individual collections of primary source material as well as numerous published materials."

Here's another little known episode in history, that in my opinion, could be considered as the start, or cause, of the Cold War. I first learned of this years ago, and it brought sense, at least to me, of the claims of the Soviets that the U.S. had been against them from the begining. Not that the Soviets were by any stretch of the imagination "good guys", but our presence and activities on Russian, which had just become "Soviet", territory would lead to the kind of paranoia they exhibited throughout the 'official" Cold War.

Earth's Artificial Ring: Project West Ford

"At the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s, all international communications were either sent through undersea cables or bounced off of the natural ionosphere. The United States military was concerned that the Soviets (or other "Hostile Actors") might cut those cables, forcing the unpredictable ionosphere to be the only means of communication with overseas forces. The Space Age had just begun, and the communications satellites we rely on today existed only in the sketches of futurists."

"Nevertheless, the US Military looked to space to help solve their communications weakness. Their solution was to create an artificial ionosphere. In May 1963, the US Air Force launched 480 million tiny copper needles that briefly created a ring encircling the entire globe. They called it Project West Ford. The engineers behind the project hoped that it would serve as a prototype for two more permanent rings that would forever guarantee their ability to communicate across the globe."

Well here's something I'll bet you didn't know. I didn't. This experiment didn't get too far though, because of opposition to the idea, and the fact that communications satellites weren't too far away. Interesting little story.

Scans of First Superman Comic

From June 1938, here's the introduction to the Man of Steel. Though the website isn't in English, it doesn't matter because the strip is.

Once clicked on, the enlarged scans should be pretty easy to read, unless, like mine, your eyes are getting a little old and and you may need to enlarge them just a wee bit more. Anyway, if you're a fan of Superman, or old comics, you'll enjoy this.