Today in History

[Peacoat]

Today's date in 1929: Black Tuesday. The market crashed, precipitating the Great Depression.

 

[MissMittens]

Today in 1901, McKinley's assassin was put to death for the murder in September of that year.

Today in 1969, the Internet was born. The first computer-to-computer data exchange was performed on 10/29/1969, and served as the basis for the founding of ARPANET which later became the Internet

 

[2jakes]

And today in 1962 the Cuban Missile Crises came to an end when Nikita Khrushchev told the US that he had ordered the dismantling of the missile bases in Cuba.

Oct. 1962:
This was the first time that I can recall a fear of life as we knew it was in danger.
From family, friends or people everywhere,
the mood was somber to say the least.

The following year, the tragedy in Dallas
and watching live in B&W tv as Ruby shot
Oswald made me realize what a crazy and
scary world I was growing in.

 

[Peacoat]

Oct. 1962:
This was the first time that I can recall a fear of life as we knew it was in danger.
From family, friends or people everywhere,
the mood was somber to say the least.

The following year, the tragedy in Dallas
and watching live in B&W tv as Ruby shot
Oswald made me realize what a crazy and
scary world I was growing in.

Yes, and that was just the beginning of it. Glad those days are behind us, but I sure had a good time back then. In another thread we had a discussion of the VW Beetle and how much room they had. That, too, brought back good memories.

 

[Peacoat]

Today in 1901, McKinley's assassin was put to death for the murder in September of that year.

Today in 1969, the Internet was born. The first computer-to-computer data exchange was performed on 10/29/1969, and served as the basis for the founding of ARPANET which later became the Internet

And where was Al Gore back then?

 

[2jakes]

Yes, and that was just the beginning of it. Glad those days are behind us, but I sure had a good time back then. In another thread we had a discussion of the VW Beetle and how much room they had. That, too, brought back good memories.

Ahhh...those "back seat memories” of my youth in a beetle!

 

[Peacoat]

I'm not going to make any comments on anything back seat, but the front seats would recline a bit.

 

[2jakes]

I'm not going to make any comments on anything back seat, but the front seats would recline a bit.

Gee... not even about having to move the back seat out the way to get to the battery
compartment when the battery went dead
or needed a jump start?

 

[Peacoat]

Gee... not even about having to move the back seat out the way to get to the battery
compartment when the battery went dead
or needed a jump start?

Nope, I don't want to get in trouble.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And where was Al Gore back then?

Fort Dix.

 

[Peacoat]

Today's date in 1974 Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire ("Rumble In The Jungle") to regain his world heavyweight title.

I was a fan when he was Cassius Clay and remained a fan throughout his career.

 

[LizzieMaine]

80 years ago tonight, over thirty million Americans tuned in on the Chase & Sanborn Hour, the nation's most popular radio program, to hear Don Ameche, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Nelson Eddy, Dorothy Lamour, Robert Armbruster's Orchestra, and the week's guest stars, movie favorite Madeline Carroll and hillbilly comedienne Judy Canova. A pretty good program all around, with Bergen's Halloween ghost story a highlight.

At the same time, there was some silly mess going on about Martians over on CBS, but only a relative handful of people ever heard any of it.

 

[2jakes]

80 years ago tonight, over thirty million Americans tuned in on the Chase & Sanborn Hour, the nation's most popular radio program, to hear Don Ameche, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Nelson Eddy, Dorothy Lamour, Robert Armbruster's Orchestra, and the week's guest stars, movie favorite Madeline Carroll and hillbilly comedienne Judy Canova. A pretty good program all around, with Bergen's Halloween ghost story a highlight.

At the same time, there was some silly mess going on about Martians over on CBS, but only a relative handful of people ever heard any of it.

I was always under the impression that the Welles "martian scare" was across the nation with panic in the streets everywhere.
But I'm relying on "Hollyvood" to come to
that conclusion.

My oh my, I'm always learning something new on this forum.
Thanks Lizzie!

 

[3fingers]

I have been told that if everyone who claimed to have been listening to Orson actually had been it would have been the most listened to program in history, but most actually learned of it later.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. The "nationwide panic" story was, as they say, Fake News -- the newspapers were highly agitated because radio had scooped them on coverage of the Munich crisis in September, and used the Welles incident to whip up hostility toward broadcasting. A few scattered reactions, concentrated in metropoilitan New York/New Jersey, were built up into a "mass panic" that didn't actually happen.

The Welles broadcast didn't even have full nationwide clearance over CBS. It wasn't broadcast at all in New England, and many other affiliates around the country bumped the program for their own sponsored local shows. It aired at 5pm on the West Coast, where it provoked no particular reaction at all.

 

[Peacoat]

In 1952 the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.

 

[2jakes]

31 Oct, 1941 - U.S.A. Mount Rushmore.

The Mt. Rushmore sculpture is completed after
Gutzon Borglum and 400 stone masons sculpt the
colossal 60-foot carvings of U.S. presidents.

The project had started on October 4th, 1927 to
represent the first 150 years of American history.

George Washington 1732–1799
Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826
Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865
Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919

 

[MissMittens]

31 Oct, 1941 - U.S.A. Mount Rushmore.
View attachment 142728
The Mt. Rushmore sculpture is completed after
Gutzon Borglum and 400 stone masons sculpt the
colossal 60-foot carvings of U.S. presidents.

The project had started on October 4th, 1927 to
represent the first 150 years of American history.

George Washington 1732–1799
Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826
Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865
Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919

I'd forgotten that the desecration of the Grandfathers on unceeded land in violation of the Treaty of Ft Laramie was completed on this day. Sad day indeed.

 

[MissMittens]

Today in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his grievances against the medieval church against a church door, thus founding Lutheranism and proselytizing protestantism.

In 1984 on this day, Indian Prime Minster, Indira Ghandi, was assasinated

 

[GHT]

On this day in 1888, Scottish inventor John Boyd Dunlop, patented pneumatic bicycle tyres.
John Boyd Dunlop, 5 February 1840 – 23 October 1921, was a Scottish inventor and veterinary surgeon, who spent most of his career in Ireland. Familiar with making rubber devices, he re-invented pneumatic tyres for his child's tricycle and developed them for use in cycle racing. He sold his rights to the pneumatic tyres to a company he formed with the president of the Irish Cyclists' Association, Harvey Du Cros, for a small cash sum and a small shareholding in their pneumatic tyre business. Dunlop withdrew in 1896. The company that bore his name, Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company, was not incorporated until later using the name well known to the public, but it was Du Cros's creation.

30 years ago, in 1988, the city of Coventry became Britain's first city to introduce a by-law banning the drinking of alcohol in public places. Coventry was made famous much earlier by Lady Godiva who, in July 1040, clothed only in her long hair, rode through the city after her husband agreed to repeal the taxes if she would strip naked and ride through the streets.

I'm not sure if this should go in: "Things that make you smile."
Ten years ago today, officials asked for the Welsh translation of a bilingual road sign which in English read : "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only." When the automatic e-mail came back from Swansea council it read "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu" and this was duly printed on the road sign. Only later was it discovered that the Welsh part of the sign said "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."