Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 December 13

= December 13 =

passport
I was applying for a US visa, and on the application form next to the passport expiration date, there's a checkbox to indicate "No Expiration". It's hassle to renew your passport every time so I'm quite envious of these countries. Which countries issue a passport that has no expiration date? Thanks in advance. Mũeller (talk) 06:25, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think any country issues a passport with no renewal requirement.  I think you check the box if for some reason the expiry date is not shown. 86.131.187.141 (talk) 10:51, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * According to Passport validity, passports issued to citizens over 70 years old by Spain don't expire. According to some Turkmenistan passports issued 2008 and earlier did not have expiration dates (but probably became invalid for use July 10, 2013) and didn't meet international standards in other ways too so were often treated with suspicion. Nil Einne (talk) 11:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Nil, I actually can't find the claim about Spain in the linked article (and it was last edited about a month ago). At the bottom of the table, there is a "2" notation that says "Extended validity for senior citizens only", but it isn't referenced in the "Spain" row, or anywhere else I can find. --Trovatore (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Under Passport validity "" It's not sourced though. I had a quick look around the time of posting, and found some sources mentioning the same thing but none of them look like RS although I just noticed Spanish passport also mentions the same thing in the infobox. Nil Einne (talk)
 * Ah. I was searching in the page for "Spain"; I didn't think of searching for "Spanish". --Trovatore (talk) 19:36, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Confirmation here these passports are no longer valid.   I see this is linked above but it's definite. 86.131.187.141 (talk) 12:00, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Who or what craft was the first to go around the world in 80 weeks? And 80 hours?
Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:39, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * List of circumnavigations can help you research the answer to your question. -- Jayron 32 15:55, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting list. If it's complete, the first vessel to break the 80-week mark seems to be the warship HMS Warspite which left England Feb 11 1826 and got back in the spring of 1827. The first to break the 80-day mark would be the submarine USS Triton which made a 60-day circumnavigation in 1960. The hours would be the Air France Concorde in 1992, in 32 hours. Course there might be ships/planes not on the list that got around sooner and faster. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 00:56, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * 1960? I'd be surprised.  Wiley Post and Harold Gatty claimed a circumnavigation record of 8+ days in 1931 in the airplane Winnie Mae, and they wrote a book about it, Around the World in Eight Days.  However, their flight was entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and only about 60% of the distance of a true circumnavigation, so it's a matter of opinion whether it should be accepted, although Wikipedia does.  The airship Graf Zeppelin had previously claimed a circumnavigation in 1929 in 21+ days, which was also entirely in the Northern Hemisphere, but more than 80% of the distance of a true circumnavigation.
 * Oops, forgot to sign that. And as long as I'm posting again to do that, I'll add, for amusement value, that as well as Post and Gatty's book, I also have a copy of a book Around the World in 175 Days, which is about the first aerial circumnavigation in 1924. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 21:58, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Although it's possible for an 80-week voyage to extend over three calendar years that's not the case here.  I've corrected the article cited by Jayron and also the article on Richard Saunders Dundas. 2A00:23C1:3182:5700:BDC1:3E4B:D223:96B3 (talk) 13:51, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

"Entirely in the Northern Hemisphere" is a terrible metric. You could start just south of the equator, go up and around the pole and come back, for a total distance 1/2 that of another plane circling a mile north of the equator. Better than a small circle that stays in the polar regions, though.

Better would be to say

"The flight was X% of the distance of a flight which passes through a pair of antipodes".

--Guy Macon (talk) 03:31, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Presumably many people have been at the south pole and walked around the pole in under a minute? Maybe even Roald Amundsen? -- SGBailey (talk) 08:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Is the following claim about Eisenhower and desegregation true? I thought it was Truman
The Greatest Presidents In US History Ranked

Published on November 22, 2018

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower was in office as the 34th US president from 1953 to 1961. He is well-known for reversing President Truman’s policy and for choosing to desegregate the army. He was also called Ike and became one of history’s most admired men in politics.

---144.35.45.39 (talk) 19:59, 13 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The overall claim of "reversing" Truman is false. Truman did, as you remembered, order desegregation of the U.S. military in Executive Order 9981. The grain of truth behind the claim is that this was not fully implemented until Eisenhower, but this was due to resistance in the military and society, not Truman reversing his policy. Our Racial segregation in the United States article mentions this, but the article is a disjointed mess so I don't blame you for not finding it easily. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 20:44, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Correct - Truman ordered desegregation, but faced resistance. Ike implemented it (ie made sure it actually happened) - Wish that we had such noble bi-partisan politics today. Blueboar (talk) 20:58, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It should be remembered that this "bi-partisan politics" existed because the parties weren't ideologically sorted, as they are today. And, that said bipartisianship included the conservative coalition that dominated Congress and fought civil rights legislation. As noted, the Southern Democrat wing of Truman's own party resisted his modest civil rights policies, even running Strom Thurmond against Truman in the 1948 election. The far right of Eisenhower's own party assailed him as a traitor secretly on the Moscow payroll for not nuking the commie hordes and dismantling the "socialist" New Deal. And this was after Eisenhower won the 1952 election by running to the right, attacking his opponent, the "egghead" Stevenson, and the Truman administration's "failures" on "Korea, Communism, and Corruption". Eisenhower was advised during the campaign not to directly criticize fellow Republican McCarthy because doing so might lose the election. Bonus factoid: Roy Cohn, McCarthy's chief counsel, later went on to work for such latter-day Republican luminaries as Murdoch, Roger Stone, and Trump. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:51, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * We also have Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces as an article specifically about this. Regards So  Why  21:25, 13 December 2018 (UTC)