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Introduction

The month after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968, I enlisted in the Army’s Intelligence Branch for three years. President Lyndon Johnson had just sent the Regular Army simultaneously to Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Chicago to help control the ensuing violence and riots that had overwhelmed police and National Guard. This was a very strange and violent time. We’ve been lucky the country has largely been free of this kind of large-scale mayhem and destruction until the recent looting and riots we saw during the pandemic in the summer of 2020.

Riots & Rockets: A Half Century of Ballistic Missile & Satellite Defense

Bill Bowe, a former President of The Cliff Dwellers and Executive Vice President of Encyclopaedia Britannica, begins with a lighthearted look at a subject he’s been following since the 1950’s. Though hard to believe today, Nike missiles with nuclear warheads were once ready to be launched from 22 sites around Chicago, including Belmont Harbor and Jackson Park on the lakefront.

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