The U-505 indoor exhibit is terrific.
I remember it all too well. 44 years ago tonight was 10 Cent Beer Night at Cleveland Stadium:
At that point, it had only been a decade since Cleveland had seen a championship.
My mother woke my up early in the morning to tell me ‘they shot RFK’.
50 years ago
BBC correspondent Alistair Cooke was there too, in what he acknowledged was unusual circumstances, for a journalist to be present at a horrific event. He talked about it in his proto-blog/podcast, Letter From America.
The key to faking out parents is the clammy hands.
Happy 70th birthday to the LP
edit - apparently my source was a few days early…
This is an excerpt from 360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story, by Sean Wilentz, out this week from Chronicle Books.
On June 21, 1948, at a press conference at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, CBS Board Chairman Ted Wallerstein announced that Columbia Records had designed a 12-inch, long-playing record, manufactured on unbreakable Vinylite, which contained up to 22½ minutes of music per side—and the label was ready to release recordings in the new formats right away. The new longer-playing records would be more durable than the standard 78s as well as, overall, less expensive: One 12-inch long-playing record featuring an entire symphony would cost $4.85, compared with $7.25 for an album of five conventional 78s containing the same symphony.
Wallerstein’s announcement was astounding, and the public greeted the news enthusiastically. The very first long-playing recording, of Nathan Milstein performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor with the New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter conducting, appeared in shops only a week after the press conference. By the end of 1948, Columbia had sold 1,250,000 long-playing records.
133 years ago today, we celebrated and welcomed immigrants:
I think this was actually yesterday, but I just saw it:
4 years ago, we lost Tony.
It’s the anniversary of something, we just don’t know what…
One of the foundations that built up great improvements in the US work force in the post-WWII era. It was recently updated in the “Forever GI Bill” signed by President Trump, which seems to have had largely positive reactions.
46 years ago today, Title IX was enacted and signed into law. Here’s a nice rundown of some key dates in the history of this law that has given women a more equal footing in all kinds of educational programs and activities. Things are by no means perfect, but it’s a whole lot more equal than it was before the law!
On June 27, 1829, English scientist James Smithson died after a long illness. His will contained an odd footnote: In the event that his only nephew died without any heirs, Smithson decreed that the whole of his estate would go to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Six years later, his nephew, Henry James Hungerford, indeed died without children, and on July 1, 1836, the U.S. Congress authorized acceptance of Smithson’s gift.
I mean there were some down sides, like that one guy–Zack Gordon maybe??–who thought the javascripts would track his brainwaves for the illuminatilizards, quitting.
Also, you know, the loss of pagination.
But we endeavor to continue on!
My ten year wedding anniversary is this month, that’s pretty random! I can’t believe that I’m a husband and a dad, as someone once said “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
John Lennon, actually.
He did in fact say it, but google tells me it can be originally attributed to a 1957 issue of Reader’s Digest. How’s that for taking a bullet right in the myth?