Today in History

[MissMittens]

On this day in 1920, the Negro Baseball League was organized by Rube Foster due to the exclusion of Black people from baseball.

Today in 1936, Billboard published it's first ever chart, the Hit Parade.

 

[Fading Fast]

On this day in 1920, the Negro Baseball League was organized by Rube Foster due to the exclusion of Black people from baseball.

Today in 1936, Billboard published it's first ever chart, the Hit Parade.

Had you asked me before your post, I would have dated both of those events much earlier.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Billboard was galvanized into action by the success of "The Lucky Strike Hit Parade," which started on radio in 1935, with "the top fifteen songs of the week as determined by sheet music sales and sales of phonograph records, and those selections played most often on the automatic coin machines." But even then, the Billboard charts were quite different in form and methodology from those published today -- they didn't take the current "Hot 100" format until 1958.

Back in the 70s and 80s, a music buff named Joel Whitburn did a series of books proposing to create "Hot 100" style charts for the pre-1958 era, but the further back he went the more arbitrary his methodology became. You'll see a lot of uninformed writing today about how something like "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" by Alma Gluck "charted" for X number of weeks in 1915, based on Whitburn's constructed listings, but those listings don't actually have any real statistical substance.

 

[MissMittens]

........... Billboard charts were quite different in form and methodology from those published today -- they didn't take the current "Hot 100" format until 1958

Wonder how much of that was actually influenced by Payola, which was a hot-button topic a year later?

Interesting that the FCC no longer considers Payola as an infraction on broadcast sponsorship rules....

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the increasing emphasis on "charting" status certainly greased the wheels for payola. The music publishing companies had been wining and dining bandleaders for decades thru the use of "song pluggers," so record companies paying off disk jockeys was seen as a logical next step. The scandalization of it was a direct result of the TV quiz show scandals of the same period -- the revelation that one form of mass entertainment was riddled with corruption helped to point the spotlight at other forms that were equally on the take.

The FCC no longer considers much of anything to be illegal. Since Presidents No. 40 and 42 gutted the whole "public interest and necessity" elements of broadcasting, the Commission has no interest whatever in protecting the integrity of anything except the political fortunes of its masters.

 

[MissMittens]

Very true. And the FCC is arguably getting even worse. I'm surprised that VOA is still operating. I'm sure it won't be long before they want to sell off the frequency space, the same way that they'll be auctioning off the WWV frequencies that will soon be vacant due to the anti-science political bent.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you don't know what time it is, you'll never realize it's later than you think.

 

[MissMittens]

If you don't know what time it is, you'll never realize it's later than you think.

Does anyone really know what time it is? Does anyone really care?

 

[LizzieMaine]

"This is the witching hour. It is the hour when dogs howl, and evil is let loose upon a sleeping world."
-- Wyllis Cooper, 1934

 

[Lean'n'mean]

On this day in 1933, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins.

On this day in 1643, the first divorce in the American colonies is recorded. Anne Clarke, from the Massachusetts Bay colony, is granted a divorce from her philandering hubby, Denis.

On this day in 1920, the New York Yankees announced the purchase of 'babe' Ruth from the Boston Red Sox for the sum of $125,000.

On this day in 1972, president Richard Nixon, launched the Space Shuttle Program.

And on this day in 1980, this became the first hip hop single to enter the top 40.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

On this day in 1919, Thoedore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States of America, died due to a pulmonary embolism, aged 60.

On this day in 1912, New Mexico joined the union & became the 47th state.

On this day in 1066, Harold ll was crowned king of England.

On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse's telegraph system (using electrical impulses transmitting encoded messages through a wire) was demonstrated for the first time.

 

[GHT]

On this day in 1861, The Governor of Maryland, Thomas Hicks, announces his opposition to the state's possible secession from the Union.

So no chance of Canadian rule, eh Lizzie?

 

[MissMittens]

Today in 1714, Henry Mill of England patented the typewriter.

Today in 1945, traitor William Joyce announced Germany had almost accomplished "total victory" by defeating the Allies in the Ardennes........

 

[vitanola]

If you don't know what time it is, you'll never realize it's later than you think.

 

[GHT]

On this day in 1815, Britain lost the last battle it ever fought against the US in the War of 1812 when General Sir Edward Pakenham and his men were defeated at New Orleans.

On this day in 1942, Stephen Hawking was born, possibly the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Albert Einstein. He wrote A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. His book sold at least 25,000,000 copies, was no doubt read by many thousands but maybe understood by only hundreds! In 2014 the film 'The Theory of Everything' was released. It dealt with his former wife's relationship with her ex-husband, his diagnosis of motor neuron disease, and his success in physics.

Today in 1967, The Forsyte Saga, the television adaptation of Galsworthy’s novel, screened its first episode. It was so popular that for the six months of its run, many churches had to change the times of their services!

 

[Lean'n'mean]

On this day in 1877, Crazy Horse, fought his last battle. After a surprise attack on his camp in Montana by U.S. calvary, during which he & his warriors, who were outnumbered & underarmed, managed to hold off the army while the women & children escaped. Thanks to a blizzard, Crazy Horse was able to escape too but realizing the better equiped soldiers would eventually hunt him down & kill his cold & hungry people, he led over 1000 indians to the Red Cloud Reservation near Nabraska & on May 6th he surrendered. 5 months later he was stabbed to death by a guard.

On this day in 1642, Italian astronomer, Galileo, died aged 77.

 

[scotrace]

Birthdays:

The already mentioned Stephen Hawking.
Elvis.
David Bowie.

 

[MissMittens]

Today in 1642, famed astronomer, polymath, and refrain in Bohemian Rhapsody, Galileo Galilei, died.

In 1790 on this day, the man who had become the first President of the U.S., George Washington, gave his first State of the Union address

 

[GHT]

Today in 1642, famed astronomer, polymath, and refrain in Bohemian Rhapsody, Galileo Galilei, died.

Galileo Galilei, was not on the curriculum at my school, which wasn't surprising given that it was a catholic school. Back in the 50's faith schools like Roman Catholics controlled most things, including what was acceptable reading. Galileo upset the Vatican, big time:

His championing of heliocentrism and Copernicanism was controversial during his lifetime, when most subscribed to either geocentrism or the Tychonic system. He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism because of the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture." Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. While under house arrest, he wrote Two New Sciences, in which he summarized work he had done some forty years earlier on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials.

Galileo wasn't actually on the list of authors and works listed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, but his scientific arguments were much too radical for the Vatican. If you Google Librorum Prohibitorum you will be surprised how many famous authors are listed.

 

[MissMittens]

Galileo wasn't actually on the list of authors and works listed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, but his scientific arguments were much too radical for the Vatican. If you Google Librorum Prohibitorum you will be surprised how many famous authors are listed.

Many works on science and humanism were censored by the Catholic Church. Still are. The Vatican library is full of books that no longer exist outside of the Vatican because of the Church's success at erasing them from print and society. Makes one wonder just how much scientific progress was stifled over the past 500 years, and where humanity would be now if such works had been widely known.