Flashback Friday
One of the more unusual stories of Exchange support began on Sept. 1, 1960—63 years ago today—when the United Nations established a PX in the Republic of the Congo. An Exchange associate was put in charge—and he would have some stress-inducing adventures that weren’t directly related to running the store. A couple of months earlier,…
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In August 1992, 31 years ago this week, Hurricane Andrew struck, leaving 250,000 homeless across Florida, Louisiana and the Bahamas, caused more than $30 billion in damage and took more than 30 lives. At the time, it was the strongest hurricane to hit Florida in 60 years. One of the places it hit hardest was…
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Thirty years ago this, the Exchange opened Firestone Master Care Car Center at Fort Lewis. It was the first such facility on a military installation in CONUS, opening a new era for automotive care at the Exchange.
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The DC, about 100 miles south of Dallas, had already been receiving merchandise for processing for months before the grand opening.
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The movie “Oppenheimer,” and the approaching anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb explosions, inspired this look back at the White Sands Missile Range Exchange. Although it opened after World War II, the Exchange’s location connects it to nuclear-age history. The facility was set up around 1949 as a “satellite” Exchange, according to a…
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You may have heard this week about a certain social media site’s rebranding, which inspires this look back at the Exchange’s own brand, which debuted nearly 13 years ago. On Sept. 17, 2010, a 77,000-square-foot main store opened at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Customers liked the store’s wide aisles and sleek design, and…
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In July 1940, the first World War II PX in Alaska opened in three storage tents, a small beginning of what would soon become an exchange system spread across the vast state. Here are some photo highlights from the past 83 years. At the top of this story is the post exchange at Fort Greely,…
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The registered nurse, who was based at Exchange headquarters, was among the Red Cross volunteers who helped survivors of the Andrea Doria shipwreck in 1956.
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National Fried Chicken Day was Thursday, but nobody said you can’t celebrate it (or keep celebrating it) today, or throughout the weekend. So Flashback Friday has prepared a bucketful of items about fried chicken in the Exchange’s past.
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During the Revolutionary War—the American Articles of War enacted rules and regulations for “civilian traders [who] were given sales commissions to supply General Washington’s army with chewing tobacco, snuff, blankets, knives and other items of ‘ordinary use.’” This set the stage for what evolved into the Exchange.
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