“I remember the promoter coming to me and saying ‘we’ve got this new group, The Beatles, joining us for the next tour, have you heard of them?’ And I had, because they’d had ‘Love Me Do’ which had been a minor hit. So they joined and we traveled together on the coach and we got on great. They were respectful and really quite protective of me, especially John.”
~Helen Shapiro

selkirk-island
1709 – Alexander Selkirk (also known as Alexander Selcraig), a Scottish sailor who spent more than four years as a castaway after being marooned on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean, was rescued.
His story of survival was widely publicized when he returned home and became a likely source of inspiration for writer Daniel Defoe’s fictional character Robinson Crusoe.


1790 – The Supreme Court of the United States met for the first time, with Chief Justice John Jay of New York presiding in the Royal Exchange Building on New York City’s Broad Street.
In September 1789, President George Washington appointed John Jay to preside as Chief Justice, and John Rutledge of South Carolina, William Cushing of Massachusetts, John Blair of Virginia, Robert Harrison of Maryland, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania to serve as Associate Justices.
Two days later, all six appointments were confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Two days for confirmation? Times have changed.


1887 – Groundhog Day – featuring a rodent “meteorologist” – was celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
According to tradition, if the groundhog (Punxsutawney Phil) comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring.


1956 – Perry Como recorded Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom) at Webster Hall Studios in New York City.
The nonsense phrase of the song’s title aside, it reached #1 on the Billboard charts and #4 on the UK Singles chart.


1959 – For the admission price of $1.25, fans got to see Dion, Frankie Sardo, The Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly perform at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.
Shortly after 1:00 am, Holly, Valens and Richardson were killed instantly when their plane crashed into a cornfield five miles northwest of the Mason City, Iowa airport just after takeoff.


1963 – 16-year-old British singer Helen Shapiro was the headline act in a tour that opened at the Gaumont Cinema, Bradford, Yorkshire, England. Among the other artists on the eight-act bill was a rising group called The Beatles.
Four years later to the day, that group recorded the opening track to what is considered the greatest album in rock history – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.


1969 – Actor Boris Karloff (Frankenstein series of films, The Mummy, and of course, his voice work in How The Grinch Stole Christmas) died from pneumonia at the age of 81.

idi-amin
1971 – One week after toppling the regime of Ugandan leader Milton Obote, Major General Idi Amin declared himself president of Uganda and chief of the armed forces. Amin soon revealed himself as an extreme nationalist and tyrant.
In 1972, he launched a genocidal program to purge Uganda of its Lango and Acholi ethnic groups. A Muslim, he reversed Uganda’s friendly relations with Israel and sought closer ties with Libya and the Palestinians.
In 1976, he made himself president for life and stepped up his suppression of various ethnic groups and political opponents in the military and elsewhere.

In 1978, Amin invaded Tanzania in an attempt to annex the Kagera region and divert attention from Uganda’s internal problems. In 1979, Tanzania launched a successful counteroffensive with the assistance of the Uganda National Liberation Front, forcing Amin to flee the country.
He was believed to have been responsible for the murder of as many as 300,000 Ugandans, though he never stood trial for his crimes.


1980 – Details of ABSCAM, an FBI operation to uncover political corruption in the government, were released to the public. In the operation, FBI agents posed as representatives of Abdul Enterprises, Ltd., a fictional business owned by an Arab sheikh.
Under FBI video surveillance, the agents met with the officials and offered them money or other considerations in exchange for special favors, such as the approval of government contracts for companies in which the sheikh had invested.

Of the 31 targeted officials, one U.S. senator (Harrison A. Williams [D-NJ]) and six members of the U.S. House of Representatives (John Jenrette [D-SC], Raymond Lederer [D-PA], Michael “Ozzie” Myers [D-PA], Frank Thompson [D-NJ], John M. Murphy [D-NY], and Richard Kelly [R-FL]) were convicted of bribery and conspiracy in separate trials in 1981.
Williams, proclaiming his innocence to the very end, served two years in Federal prison.
Jenrette served 13 months in prison.
Lederer served 13 months in prison.
Myers served 3 years in prison.
Thompson served 3 years in prison.
Murphy served 18 months in prison.
Kelly lost his bid for re-election in 1980, and initially had his conviction overturned in 1982 on the basis that the FBI had unlawfully entrapped him.
However, a higher court reinstated the conviction in 1984, and he served 13 months in prison.

FW-de-Klerk
1990 – South African President F.W. de Klerk lifted a ban on the African National Congress and promised to free Nelson Mandela.
Shortly thereafter, for the first time in 20 years, photographs of Mandela were allowed to be published in South Africa.
Mandela was released on February 11 after serving 27 years in prison.

bert-parks
1992 – Bert Parks, best known for hosting the annual Miss America telecast from 1955 to 1979, died of lung cancer at the age of 77.

donald-pleasance
1995 – Actor Donald Pleasance died from complications following heart valve replacement surgery. He was 75.
He appeared in the Halloween series of films, The Great Escape, You Only Live Twice, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and many more.

gene-kelly
1996 – Actor Gene Kelly died following a series of strokes. He was 83.
He starred in An American In Paris, Anchors Aweigh, For Me And My Gal, Take Me Out To The Ballgame, and Singin’ In The Rain.

Max-Schmeling
2005 – Former Heavyweight champion Max Schmeling, whose two fights with Joe Louis in 1936 and 1938 were worldwide cultural events because of their national associations, died of natural cause at the age of 99.
His fights with Louis – in particular, the 1938 battle – came at a highly emotional time. Louis, with his poor, black roots, was adopted by American fans as the symbol of America as a land of opportunity.
In contrast, Americans perceived Schmeling and his ties to Hitler (although he despised the German leader) as an obvious threat to those opportunities and ideals.

Louis avenged the 1936 loss by knocking Schmeling out in the rematch. Schmeling later said, “Looking back, I’m almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. “
Later in life, Schmeling and Louis became close friends and he assisted his former rival financially in his later years, eventually financing Louis’ military funeral in 1981

philip-seymour-hoffman
2014 – Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died at the age of 51 from what was officially ruled an accident caused by “acute mixed drug intoxication, including heroin, cocaine, benzodiazepines and amphetamine.”
He starred in Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Scent Of A Woman, Charlie Wilson’s War, Doubt, The Master and was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor in Capote.
In addition to his magnificent film work (and I only scratched the surface above), his performances in three Broadway plays – True West, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Death of A Salesman – all led to Tony Award nominations.
He truly was, as described in his New York Times obituary, “perhaps the most ambitious and widely admired American actor of his generation.”

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2019 RayLemire.com / Streamingolddies.com. All Rights Reserved.