On January 25…
The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding.
~Will and Ariel Durant
Let’s see how much of this you remember
(or knew to begin with)
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1863 – Union General Ambrose Burnside was removed as commander of the Army of the Potomac after serving in the role for two months.
Burnside had failed Lincoln, not once, but twice.
His ill-advised assault at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 13, 1862 had cost the loss of more than 13,000 Yankees. One month later, Burnside attempted another campaign against the Confederates but four days of rain turned the Union offensive into the ignominious “Mud March,” during which the Yankees floundered on mud roads.
Lincoln had seen enough and dismissed Burnside, appointing General Joseph Hooker as the new commander of the army.
1924 – The first Winter Olympics took off in style at Chamonix in the French Alps.
The competition consisted of 16 events involving a total of six sports; bobsled, curling, hockey, figure skating, speed skating, and Nordic skiing.
The U.S. won one gold medal; Charles Jewtraw in the 500-meter speed skating.
1947 – Al Capone, who attained fame during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the “Chicago Outfit,” died at the age of 48 from cardiac arrest in his Palm Island, Florida home.
The man responsible for ordering over 30 murders of gang rivals in his heyday had – according to two independent psychiatric evaluations – the mental capability of a 12-year-old child due to paralytic dementia, a severe neuropsychiatric disorder caused by late-stage syphilis.
1948 – Axis Sally, who broadcast Nazi propaganda to U.S. troops in Europe, stood trial in the United States for war crimes.
Out of the 12 Americans indicted for treason following World War II, all but five were radio broadcasters. One of the most notorious to be convicted was Mildred Gillars, or Axis Sally as she was known to the GI’s who heard her Radio Berlin broadcasts.
A Portland, Maine native and a former student at Ohio Wesleyan University, Gillars went to France to study music. By 1934 she was in Germany, where she later claimed she fell under the spell of former American professor Max Otto Koischewitz.
Koischewitz was Radio Berlin’s Program Director and GIllars became his star propaganda broadcaster. Typically, she did a DJ program – breaking up the music with angry tirades.
“Damn Roosevelt! Damn Churchill! Damn all Jews who made this war possible. I love America, but I do not love Roosevelt.” She regularly played nostalgic American songs and speculated about the fidelity of the wives and sweethearts whom the soldiers, sailors, and airmen had left behind.
Despite all her other antics, Gillars was convicted on the basis of just one broadcast, Gillars made that broadcast on June 5, 1944, just prior to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, in a radio play written by Koischwitz, Vision of Invasion.
The radio drama sought to scare GI’s out of invading occupied Europe. In the play, the mother of an Ohio soldier sees her son in a dream. He tells her that he’s already dead, his ship having been destroyed mid-invasion in the English Channel by Germans. GI’s can be heard sobbing and shrieking in the background, and the effect of the broadcast is said to have been chilling.
On March 10, 1949, the jury convicted Gillars and she was sentenced to 10 to 30 years in prison. Gillars served her sentence at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, WV, and was released in 1961.
She died of colon cancer in 1988.
1949 – The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences held its first annual awards ceremony at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles.
Shirley Dinsdale, a 20-year-old ventriloquist who starred in the children’s show Judy Splinters, was the first winner (Outstanding Television Personality) that first night at the Hollywood Athletic Club.
1968 – Sam Cooke recorded Chain Gang at RCA Studio A in New York City.
The song was inspired after a chance meeting with an actual chain gang of prisoners on a highway while Sam was on tour.
1968 – Israeli submarine Dakar, carrying 69 sailors, disappeared on a journey to Haifa in Israel and was not seen again for 31 years.
After the vessel had passed the island of Crete, there was a signal from the Dakar just after midnight on January 25 and then nothing. Unsuccessful attempts were made to contact the Dakar throughout the day.
The following day, an international search-and-rescue operation began. Forces from the United States, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon all tried to find the Dakar for five days before giving up.
Despite extensive searches over the course of three decades, the submarine’s wreckage was not found until 1999, when it was located between the islands of Cyprus and Crete. The exact cause of the sinking remains a mystery to this day.
1970 – M*A*S*H, directed by Robert Altman and starring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman and Robert Duvall, premiered.
The film was an overwhelming financial success. Filmed on a budget of $3.1 million, it returned over $82 million at the box office.
It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress for Sally Kellerman, Best Film Editing, and won an Oscar for Ring Lardner’s screenplay.
1971 – Cult leader Charles Manson was convicted, along with followers Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkle, of the brutal 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others.
Manson believed in what he called “Helter Skelter”, a term he took from the song of the same name by the Beatles. Manson believed Helter Skelter to be an impending apocalyptic race war, which he described in his own version of the lyrics to the Beatles’ song.
He believed the murders would help precipitate that war. From the beginning of his notoriety, a pop culture arose around him in which he ultimately became an emblem of insanity, violence and the macabre.
On March 29 all four were sentenced to death. The trial of another defendant, Charles “Tex” Watson, was delayed by extradition proceedings, but he was likewise found guilty and sentenced to death.
In 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in California, and Manson and his followers’ death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment.
1981 – Jiang Qing, the widow of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, is sentenced to death for her “counter-revolutionary crimes” during the Cultural Revolution.
In the late 1960s, the Cultural Revolution of the early 60s had waned, and Jiang faded from the public eye. However, after her husband’s death in 1976, she and three other radicals who had come to power in the revolution were singled out as the “Gang of Four.” Jiang was arrested and in 1977 expelled from the Communist Party.
Three years later, the “Gang of Four” was put on trial. Jiang was held responsible for provoking the turmoil and bloodshed of the revolution, but she denied the charges and denounced China’s leaders.
She was found guilty and sentenced to die. On January 25, 1983, exactly two years after she was condemned, the Chinese government commuted her sentence to life imprisonment. In 1991, she died in prison of an apparent suicide.
1988 – Vice President George Bush and Dan Rather clashed on The CBS Evening News as the anchorman attempted to question the Republican presidential candidate about his role in the Iran-Contra affair.
Bush held his own during the on-air confrontation, and the lasting effect was to reveal how Rather was driven by his personal biases, at one point lecturing the Vice President: “You’ve made us hypocrites in the face of the world.”
1988 – George Harrison released his When We Was Fab single.
The lyrics served as a nostalgic reflection by Harrison on the days of Beatlemania during the 1960s, when the Beatles were first referred to as “the Fab Four”.
The song referenced the psychedelic sound that the Beatles had helped popularize in 1967, through its use of sitar, cello, and backwards-relayed effects.
1990 – Actress Ava Gardner died of pneumonia at the age of 67.
She starred in The Barefoot Contessa, The Killers, Seven Days In May, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Night Of The Iguana, and Mogambo, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Her three marriages were all short-lived: Mickey Rooney (1942-43); bandleader Artie Shaw (1945-46) and Frank Sinatra (1951-57).
1995 – Russia’s early-warning defense radar detected an unexpected missile launch near Norway, and Russian military command estimated the missile to be only minutes from impact on Moscow.
Moments later, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, his defense minister, and his chief of staff were informed of the missile launch. The nuclear command systems switched to combat mode, and the nuclear suitcases carried by Yeltsin and his top commander were activated for the first time in the history of the Soviet-made weapons system.
Five minutes after the launch detection, Russian command determined that the missile’s impact point would be outside Russia’s borders.
Three more minutes passed and Yeltsin was then informed that the launching was likely not part of a surprise nuclear strike by Western nuclear submarines.
These conclusions came minutes before Yeltsin and his commanders should have ordered a nuclear response based on standard launch on warning protocols.
Later, it was revealed that the missile, launched from Spitzbergen, Norway, was a Black Brant XII carrying instruments for scientific measurements.
Nine days before, Norway had notified 35 countries, including Russia, of the exact details of the planned launch. The Russian Defense Ministry had received Norway’s announcement but had neglected to inform the on-duty personnel at the early-warning center of the imminent launch.
2017 – Actress Mary Tyler Moore died from cardiopulmonary arrest due to pneumonia. She was 80.
Although she won an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in Ordinary People, she was best known for her roles in the television sitcoms The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977).
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2019 RayLemire.com / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.