Playing Harp Duets with Hoffa

Thu 4 August 2011

Playing Harp Duets with Hoffa

Filed under: #satscene —— Sylvia @ 20:21

On the 30th of July, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. Hoffa seemed born to be a labor union organiser: he was first involved in a union at his very first job at a grocery chain. Although he was only a teenager, he quickly rose to leadership and then was dismissed from the job for his union activities. He made his name through union activities from then on. By 1957, he was President of the Teamsters Union and by 1961 he organised the National Master Freight Agreement, which brought truck drivers all over North America under a single national union.

He went to prison in 1964 for jury tampering, attempted bribery and fraud. Nixon made a deal to release Hoffa early under the condition that he resign the Teamsters presidency and not take part in any union activities until 1980. Hoffa accepted the early release in December 1971 but was unhappy with the restriction on his union activity. He was in the progress of re-gaining support within the Teamsters and writing his autobiography when he disappeared.

Jimmy Hoffa – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hoffa disappeared at, or sometime after, 2:45 pm on July 30, 1975, from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, a suburb of Detroit. According to what he had told others, he believed he was to meet there with two Mafia leaders: Anthony Giacalone from Detroit, and Anthony Provenzano from Union City, New Jersey and New York City.

Upon Hoffa’s failure to return home from the restaurant by late that evening, his wife called police to report him missing. When police arrived at the restaurant, they found Hoffa’s car, but no sign of Hoffa himself, nor any indication of what had happened to him. Extensive investigations into the disappearance began immediately, and continued over the next several years by several law enforcement groups, including the FBI. However, the investigations failed to conclusively determine Hoffa’s fate. For their part, Giacolone and Provenzano were each found not to have been in the vicinity of the restaurant that afternoon, and each of them denied that they had scheduled any meeting with Hoffa.

Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982, on the seventh anniversary of his disappearance.

To this day, we don’t know what happened to Hoffa. But his disappearance has given rise to the poetic phrase “playing harp duets with Hoffa” which means someone has gone to a better place.

If you are wondering what places might be better, well, just take a look at SatScenes! We have some amazing landscapes for you this week.

On the 30th of July 2011, these are the photographs that were taken by interesting people in interesting places all over the world: