Historical Uses
The use of a red ball for signaling was used as early as the 1800s, with a flag with a red ball on a white field indicating the important ship of a vice admiral.
The term "Red Ball" was later a railroad phrase referring to express shipping for priority and perishables (originated by the Santa Fe system ~ 1892, extensively used by 1920s), where the trains were marked with red balls and the cleared express use tracks were marked with red balls.
Some later trucking companies adopted the "red ball" name, and Patton in 1940 used the Texas "Red Ball Express" trucking company on contract to supply the Louisiana Maneuvers.
Post WWII use of the "red ball" phrase was for expedited legal cases of murder or similar importance.
Read more about this topic: Red Ball Express
Famous quotes containing the word historical:
“Some of us still get all weepy when we think about the Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that earth is a big furry goddess-creature who resembles everybody’s mom in that she knows what’s best for us. But if you look at the historical record—Krakatoa, Mt. Vesuvius, Hurricane Charley, poison ivy, and so forth down the ages—you have to ask yourself: Whose side is she on, anyway?”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)