Operation Frequent Wind

Just over 40 years ago, on April 23, 1975, President Gerald Ford announced the Vietnam War was
finished as far as America is concerned. Military involvement had come to an end, but the U.S.
still faced a crucial task: the safe evacuation of Americans who remained in Saigon, including the
then-U.S. ambassador, Graham Martin.
After Tan Son Nhut Airport was bombed heavily on April 29, and the last two Americans were killed
in action, the evacuation had to continue with helicopters. "It was an absolute mess," Colin
Broussard, a marine assigned to Martins personal security detail, told the Chicago Tribune in
2005. "We knew immediately when we saw the airfield that the fixed-wing operation was done."
Over the course of April 29 and into the following morning, Operation Frequent Wind transported
more than 1,000 Americans and more than 5,000 Vietnamese out of the city. The 19-hour operation
involved 81 helicopters and is often called the largest helicopter evacuation on record.

President Reagan's call for an international meeting to discourage the use of chemical weapons
is a stopgap response to delays in eliminating the weapons altogether, Administration and
Congressional experts and arms control analysts say.
William Harvey was the first person to correctly describe bloods circulation in the body.
He showed that arteries and veins form a complete circuit. The circuit starts at the heart and leads back
to the heart.
The hearts regular contractions drive the flow of blood around the whole body

Harvey was able to make his discoveries because he ignored medical text books, preferring his
own observations and the deductions he made during dissections of animals.
Remarkably, western medical beliefs and theories about blood and circulation had advanced little
since Galen wrote his medical textbooks in Rome 1400 years earlier.

Ihaveoftenwonderedandevenlaughedatthosewhofanciedthateverything

hadbeensoconsummatelyandabsolutelyinvestigatedbyanAristotleora
Galenorsomeothermightyname,thatnothingcouldbyanypossibilitybe
addedtotheirknowledge.
In 1628, aged 50, Harvey published his masterpiece usually referred to as De Moto Cordis the
Motion of the Heart. Its full title in English is: Anatomical Studies on the Motion of the Heart and Blood
in Animals.
In De Moto Cordis Harvey became the first person to accurately describe the function of the heart and
the circulation of blood around the body.

Andreas Vesalius
The Flemish physician Andreas Vesahus (also Andreas Vesal, Andr Vesalio or Andre Vesale) is widely
considered to be the founder of the modern science of anatomy. He was a major figure of the Scientific
Revolution. Vesahuss book De Humani Commis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body) is one
of the most important works about human anatomy.
During that time, scholars thought that the work of the ancient Greek physician Galen was an authority

when it came to human anatomy. As Greek and Roman laws had disallowed the dissection of human
beings, Galen had evidently reasoned out analogies related to human anatomy after studying pigs and
apes. Vesalius knew that it was absolutely essential to analyze real corpses to study the human body.
Vesalius resurrected the use of human dissection, regardless of the strict ban by the Catholic Church.
He soon began to realize that Galens work was an evalution of the dissection of animals, not human
beings. Vesalius once demonstrated that men and women have the same number of ribs, contrary to
the biblical story of Adam and Eve which tells that Eve was brought into existence from one of Adams
ribs, and that men had one less rib as compared to women. Vesalius proved that belief wrong.