History Book: Mao Zedong gains control of China

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, September 16th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, former President Jimmy Carter witnesses a strange object flying that he couldn’t identify.

Also, Amish families seek the FBI’s help over an unusual crime.

EICHER: But first, new leadership and radical changes for China. Here’s WORLD Radio Reporter Emma Perley:

EMMA PERLEY: 75 years ago, Communist Party leader Mao Zedong gets up to address a crowded conference room. Applause rings out for five minutes before he is finally able to speak. Audio here from VideoChinaTV.

NEWSREEL: [Speaking Mandarin] Fellow delegates, we are all convinced that our work will go down in the history of mankind …

He tells the delegates that he’s convinced their work “will go down in history.”

Zedong’s communist Red Army has just gained control of the country after a costly civil war. The defeated Chinese Nationalists and anti-communists have fled to Taiwan. This September 21st political conference marks the beginning of a new regime. He says “the Chinese people, one quarter of all humanity, have made a stand.”

NEWSREEL: The Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humanity, have now stood up. [Applause]

The conference adopts a temporary constitution, known as the Common Program. It outlines a communist agenda. Among other things, the Program hands over much of China’s land to the government. And establishes Zedong and his associates as a democratic dictatorship.

A week later, Zedong announces the new government at Tiananmen Square inaugurating the People’s Republic of China.

Zedong says the conference officially put him and his allies in charge. And that his government now legally represents all of China. He rules as a dictator until his death in 1976.

Next, Jimmy Carter glimpses an Unidentified Flying Object. And he isn’t alone. About twenty other people see the same UFO at the same time in a small south Georgia town. It happened 55 years ago.

The former president appeared on The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe in 2007.

CARTER: And all of us, there were 26 men I believe, if I remember right, all of us saw a very bright light in the western sky, and it was bright enough to attract our attention, much brighter than a star.

The object hovers just above the horizon. And it’s completely silent.

CARTER: And it got closer and closer, and then it seemed to stop in its proximity to us, and then the color of it changed from white to blue to red. And it stayed there for a while. All of us were aghast at what we were seeing. Couldn't figure it out.

Carter doesn’t think the UFO is from outer space or that there are aliens on board. He just doesn’t know what it is.

Four years later on September 18th, Carter files a report with the International UFO Bureau. Some astronomers suggest he actually saw the planet Venus, which was unusually bright that evening. But Carter doesn’t think so.

CARTER: Some of us even have, have like I do, have amateur telescope, small telescopes, so we were thoroughly familiar with Venus as it changes from morning to an evening star. It was, it was not Venus.

During his presidential campaign Carter promises to reveal any classified information about UFOs to the public, although he backtracks on that promise after being elected.

But Carter does write a letter to extraterrestrials in 1977. It’s launched aboard NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, and is currently 15 million miles away in interstellar space. Voice actor Ed Phillips reads Carter’s words.

ED PHILLIPS/CARTER: We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilization. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.

We end today on a cold October night when Amish couple Myron and Arlene Miller wake up to find five strangers on their doorstep. Audio here from NPR.

NEWS: They pulled him out in the front yard, and they have scissors and a battery-powered shaver and everything. They're trying to hold him down and cut his beard off and cut his hair off.

The men jump into a vehicle and speed away, while Myron walks back to his house—without his beard.

The Amish follow several Old Testament regulations for how men should treat their facial hair. When Amish men get married, they stop shaving. So, long beards symbolize a husband’s long term commitment to his wife.

The hair cutting attack on Myron is the fourth such attack in late 2011. By November, the FBI opens a hate crime investigation and agents arrest several suspects. Audio here from News 5 Cleveland.

NEWS: In the Amish community, a man’s hair and beard are sacred, and any effort to forcibly shave or cut that hair in their eyes is elevated to the level of a hate crime, and that was the charge leveled today against 7 men, including the leader of a breakaway Amish group: Sam Mullet and 3 of his sons.

The federal trial reveals that Sam Mullet, a controversial Amish spiritual leader, had encouraged the attacks as a way of taking revenge on people who criticized his religious teachings. Prosecutors argue that Mullet is a dangerous man with a cult-like following.

NEWS: Defendant after defendant after defendant would stand there and offer yet again to sacrifice his or her own life for Mr. Mullet is just proof of what we’ve said all along. Mr. Mullet is a cult leader. Mr. Mullet is a thug. Mr. Mullet is a bully. And Mr Mullet belongs where criminals belong: in federal prison.

Sam’s wife, Martha, doesn’t think a long prison sentence is fair—to Sam or her family. Audio here from The New York Times.

NYT/AP: We made a mistake. We’re not saying that we didn’t do anything wrong. We made a mistake … Their hair will grow back. Their beards will grow back. They can go on with their lives. But they want to tear our lives apart.

On September 20th, 2012, a judge convicted Mullet (and 15 of his followers) under a federal hate crimes act. Mullet faced 15 years in prison until 2015, when an appeals court reduced his sentence to only 10 years. In 2022, Mullet finished the rest of his term at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.

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