HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BEAVER STATE!

Mount Hood is the highest peak in Oregon.

TIM MAGUIRE

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev speaking at the UN Assembly in 1960.

The monument dedicated to the victims of the balloon bomb.
    

In Lakeview, Oregon on this day in 1945, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five
neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese
balloon (similar to the one shown above) out of the woods.

Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and
it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first
and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United
States during World War II. The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000
in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families
of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford, and Richard and
Ethel Patzke, the five slain children.

The explosive balloon found at Lakeview was a product of one of only
a handful of Japanese attacks against the continental United States,
which were conducted early in the war by the Japanese.

Norma Jean Paulus (Petersen) (March 13, 1933 – February 28, 2019)

(Portland, Ore.) – Former Oregon Secretary of State Norma Paulus has
died.   

Close friend Kerry Tymchuk confirmed her death to local news media
Thursday afternoon.

Paulus’ death comes a day after the state’s current Secretary of State
Dennis Richardson died of brain cancer.

In addition to serving as secretary of state, Paulus was an Oregon
representative from 1970 to 1976 and Superintendent of Public
Instruction. She was appointed to that position by former Gov. Neil
Goldschmidt in 1990 and was elected to it in 1994.

A member of the Republican Party, she was the first woman to be
elected to statewide office. She was elected secretary of state in 1976
and re-elected in 1980. She ran for governor in 1986 but lost.

 
Dennis Michael Richardson (July 30, 1949 – February 26, 2019)

SALEM, Ore. – Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson has passed away
after a battle with cancer.

Oregon state officials say Richardson died at around 9 p.m. Tuesday at his
home surrounded by family and friends.

Richardson announced in June 2018 that he was receiving treatment for
brain cancer. He said he was diagnosed in May.