1494 has the original Globe-Trotter, Chris « The Bliss » Columbus, log in his books the sighting on this day of an undiscovered land where people wearing dark floor-mops on their heads seemed to be permanently surrounded by smoke. His exploration of what the locals called Djiam Eh-kha ended up being quite short. The crew had to haul carcass and leave when one shipmate fired his musket at the natives’ figure of authority (but not his disciple). The lad later swore that the gesture was one of self-preservation.
Although physicist and astronomer Edmund Halley had predicted and tried to explain it, the total eclipse of the sun appearing in the sky of London, England in 1715 lead to a massive religious panic as citizens fear that the natural event was in fact the beginning of the apocalypse. 270 years later the constant playing on radios of a Bonnie Tyler song inspired by the natural phenomenon leads to a massive religious panic as the inexplicable success of such an annoying piece of garbage could also only be interpreted as the beginning of the apocalypse.
A Pulitzer prize was awarded in 1937 today to author Margaret Mitchell for her Civil War romantic novel “Gone With the Wind”. And I really don’t know why I mention it because frankly, I don’t give a damn.
Two years later though appeared a true and most important staple of American culture, with the recording by Patti, Maxine and LaVerne Andrews of the quintessential music masterpiece “Beer Barrel Polka”…
Day of deep sadness in 1957 for the people of Brooklyn who learn that Dodger’s owner Walter O’Malley signed off on his Baseball team moving to Southern California. Iconic radio commentator Red Barber then predicted the move would be a disastrous failure for O’Malley, arguing that no ball player would ever be made to leave his city and fans, no matter the amount of money offered to do so. God bless Red Barber.
Washington Post correspondent Keith Richburg experiences a very uncomfortable brush with death when taking the streets of Paris, France to cover the student riots of 1968. Richburg had to flee for his life when a mob of rioters angrily pursued him throughout the city streets, for what they thought was his hysterically laughing at their efforts and convictions. “It is complete impossibility”, he later wrote, “not to start laughing like a raving maniac when faced with sea of Frenchmen shouting nasty words that actually sound like baby farts.”
And finally in 2003 New Hampshire mourns one of the most famous natural formations in North America with the collapse of the Old Man in the Mountain, a revered profile-like shape near the top of Canon Mountain. The event had been long coming, according to geologists who claimed that the formation had necessitated the use of cables and spikes to be held in place ever since an ill-fated attempt to modify the shape in his own image by Thomas Edison (thought I’d skip it today, didn’t you).
WOW: Words Of (a certain) Wisdom
“Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them” -Margaret Mitchell