On August 26…
“As a result of this attack, 13 of our nation’s best and brightest, our heroes, paid the ultimate sacrifice in an effort to save the lives of American citizens and thousands of Afghans during the noncombatant evacuation of Hamid Karzai International Airport. “
Lieutenant General Ron Clark
1920 – The 19th amendment to the United States Constitution took effect, giving women the right to vote.
1930 – Actor Lon Chaney died at the age of a throat hemorrhage at the age of 47.
Best known for his starring roles in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of The Opera, his ability to transform himself using makeup techniques he developed himself earned him the nickname “The Man of a Thousand Faces.”
1939 – The first televised Major League baseball games were broadcast on station W2XBS, the station that was to become WNBC-TV.
Announcer Red Barber called the doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.
The video coverage was very crude by today’s standards. There were only two stationary camera angles: The first was placed down the third base line to pick up infield throws to first, and the second was placed high above home plate to get an extensive view of the field.
On the positive side, the television screen wasn’t filled with graphics, clueless fans weren’t spotted talking into cell phones, and there were no play reviews.
1942 – Ukrainian police and German state police started driving Jews out of their houses in Chortkiv, western Ukraine.
They divided their prisoners into groups of 120, packed them into freight cars and deported 2000 to Belzec extermination camp.
Five hundred of the sick and children didn’t make the long journey.
They were murdered on the spot.
1968 – As the Democratic National Convention began in Chicago, thousands of antiwar demonstrators take to Chicago’s streets to protest the Vietnam War and its support by the top Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
During the four-day convention, the most violent in U.S. history, police and National Guardsmen clashed with protesters and hundreds of people, including innocent bystanders, were beaten by the Chicago police.
In the convention’s aftermath, a federal commission investigating the convention described one of the confrontations as a “police riot” and blamed Chicago Mayor Richard Daley for inciting his police to violence.
1968 – The Beatles released ‘Hey Jude’ / ‘Revolution’.
It was the first single from their new record label, Apple Records. It spent nine weeks at #1 in the United States and has sold over 9 million copies.
Hey Jude was nominated for the Grammy Awards of 1969 in the categories of Record of the Year, Best Contemporary Pop Vocal by Group, and Song of the Year, but failed to win any of them.
Simon & Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson won for Record of the Year and Best Contemporary Pop Vocal, while O.C. Smith’s recording of Bobby Russell’s Little Green Apples won Song of the Year.
1974 – Aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh died at the age of 72.
At the age of 25, Lindbergh had emerged from the virtual obscurity of a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame as the result of his solo nonstop flight from Long Island, New York, Paris, France in his single-engine Spirit of St. Louis.
His life was marred by the kidnapping and murder of his infant son in 1932, and later his outspoken (and very unpopular) belief that the survival of the white race was more important than the survival of democracy in Europe: “We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.”
Lindbergh’s speeches and writings reflected his adoption of Nazi views on race and religion. He wrote in his memoirs that all of the Germans he met thought the country would be better off without its Jews.
In a speech (“Who Are the War Agitators?”) at an America First rally at the Des Moines Coliseum on September 11, 1941, Lindbergh claimed the three groups “pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration.”
1978 – Two days after his wife’s death from cancer, and two days before his own 79th birthday, actor Charles Boyer committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal.
He received four nominations for Best Actor Academy Awards: Conquest, Algiers, Gaslight, and Fanny.
1986 – In the so-called “Preppie Killer” murder case, 18-year-old Jennifer Levin was found strangled in New York’s Central Park.
Robert Chambers later pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 15 years in prison.
He didn’t learn much from his days behind bars. In 2008, he was convicted of selling drugs and sentenced to 19 years in prison.
1986 – Actor Ted Knight (starred in Caddyshack and Too Close For Comfort, but best known for playing the role of Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) died of Colorectal cancer at the age of 62.
2009 – Ellie Greenwich (co-writer of ‘Be My Baby’, ‘I Can Hear Music’, ‘Leader Of The Pack’, ‘Then He Kissed Me’, ‘Chapel Of Love’, ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, ‘Hanky Panky’, ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’, ‘River Deep, Mountain High’, Maybe I Know, Baby, I Love You’ and many others) died of a heart attack at the age of 68.
2021 – During the Kabul airlift, a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport killed 13 U.S. military personnel and at least 170 Afghan civilians. The incident was a gruesome coda to America’s longest war.
The explosion occurred by a canal where U.S. forces were checking evacuees’ passports, visas and other documentation before allowing them inside the airport. An eyewitness stated that the explosion felt as if someone had pulled the ground from under his feet, and saw other evacuees thrown into the air by the force of the blast.
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2024 RayLemire.com. / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.