On April 4…

“Republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the lover of power … surely nothing is more likely to produce such a state of mind than the long continuance of an office of high trust.
I renew the pledge heretofore given that under no circumstances will I consent to serve a second term.”
~President William Henry Harrison
Inaugural Address
March 4, 1841

Little did he know…

1841 – President William Henry Harrison died after serving only 32 days in office, leaving him with the unfortunate presidential record of shortest term in office.
Ironically, the man with the shortest White House tenure delivered the longest inaugural address in history, which may have been his undoing. His speech, delivered on a bitterly cold March morning, contained 8,445 words and clocked in at one hour and 45 minutes.
For comparison, Andrew Jackson, in his second inaugural address, managed only 1,100 words. Contemporary presidents typically give speeches in the 2,000-3,000-word range.
Lincoln’s second Inaugural, arguably the most examined in history, was only 700 words.
The 68-year old Harrison went to bed at the end of inauguration day with a bad cold that soon developed into a fatal case of pneumonia, although a medical analysis made in 2014, based on records of the White House water supply being downstream of public sewage, concluded that he likely died of septic shock due to typhoid fever.
“Old Tippecanoe” Factoids: His father, Benjamin Harrison V, was a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
His grandson, Benjamin, became the 23rd president of the United States in 1889.

1865 – President Abraham Lincoln visited the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, one day after Union forces captured it.
Lincoln’s ship could not pass several obstructions that had been placed in the river by the Confederates so 12 soldiers rowed him to shore. He landed without fanfare but was soon recognized by some black workmen who ran to him and bowed. The modest Lincoln told them to “…kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.”
Accompanied by his son, Tad, a small group of soldiers and a growing entourage of freed slaves, Lincoln walked to the Confederate White House before walking to the Virginia statehouse to see the chambers of the Confederate Congress.
That night, Lincoln dreamt of “the subdued sobs of mourners” and a corpse lying on a catafalque in the White House East Room. In the dream, Lincoln asked a soldier standing guard “Who is dead in the White House?” to which the soldier replied, “The President. He was killed by an assassin.” Lincoln woke up at that point but the dream continued to haunt him.
Ten days later, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

1918 – A plan was passed by Congress at the suggestion of U.S. Naval Captain Samuel C. Reid in which the American flag was changed to have 20 stars, with a new star to be added when each new state was admitted, but the number of stripes would be reduced to 13 so as to honor the original colonies (in 1795, the number of stripes had been increased to 15 to reflect the entry of Vermont and Kentucky as states of the Union).
The act specified that new flag designs should become official on the first July 4 (Independence Day) following admission of one or more new states. The most recent change, from 49 stars to 50, occurred in 1960 when the present design was chosen after Hawaii gained statehood in August 1959.

1933 – The dirigible Akron crashed in New Jersey, killing 73 people in one of the first air disasters in history.
The U.S. Navy was using the airship – at 785 feet in length, it was the largest airship built in the United States when it took its first flight two years earlier – to obtain technical data over New Jersey.
It was well-known that dirigibles could experience problems in bad weather, but despite the violent thunderstorms in the area that day, the Akron was not grounded.
While in the air over the Atlantic Ocean, a miscommunication over directions by crew members sent the Akron directly into the storm instead of around it. The storm’s winds caused the ship to plunge nearly 1,000 feet in a few seconds.
The crew then made its second mistake: the blimp’s water ballast was dumped in order to make the flying ship rise. However, the ballast dump thrust the blimp up too far and too fast. Critical devices and cables were destroyed and all control was lost. The Akron plunged into the ocean. The disaster didn’t end there.
The rescue airship J-3 was sent to help the Akron crew. It also crashed in of the storm, killing two of the seven crew members on board. Only three of the Akron’s 76 crew members survived the disaster.
One of the survivors was the commander who had ordered the fateful ballast dump.

1958 – 14-year old Cheryl Crane, the daughter of actress Lana Turner, stabbed organized crime figure Johnny Stompanato to death.
Crane claimed she did it to defend her mother from a vicious beating by Stompanato. His year-long relationship with Turner had been rocky and marked with physical abuse. Crane had heard the couple arguing in Turner’s bedroom, and took a knife from the kitchen, planning to defend her mother.
Crane stabbed Stompanato in the stomach, penetrating his liver and aorta. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The crime was later ruled a “justifiable homicide”.

1960 – Clocking in at three hours and 32 minutes, William Wyler’s Technicolor epic Ben-Hur was the behemoth entry at the 32nd annual Academy Awards ceremony.
Setting an Oscar record, the film swept 11 of the 12 categories in which it was nominated, including Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Actor (Charlton Heston) and Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith).

1960 – Elvis Presley recorded Are You Lonesome Tonight? at RCA studios in Nashville, Tennessee.
Elvis was not excited about recording the song but his manager, Tom Parker, insisted. In the end, Parker was proven correct.
The song spent six weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1964 – For the first (and only) time in Billboard history, one artist – The Beatles – held the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100.
If you look closely, you’ll notice the five songs were on four different labels!
Capitol, after rejecting the band in 1963, was trying to make up for lost time by issuing singles from the group’s back catalog — as well as singles from A Hard Day’s Night.
In addition, there was an ongoing legal dispute with Vee Jay Records as to who owned the rights to the songs on the Please Please Me album, and knowing they had a limited amount of time to make as much money as possible, Vee Jay put out as many singles as they could, both on their label and Tollie, a subsidiary label.
Swan Records had released She Loves You in 1963 (after Capitol and Vee Jay both passed on it). It flopped but when the band took off in America, they re-released it.
Chart Factoid: The Beatles also had seven other singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart that week:
31: I Saw Her Standing There (Capitol)
41: From Me To You (Vee Jay)
46: Do You Want To Know A Secret (Vee Jay)
58: All My Loving (Capitol)
65: You Can’t Do That (Capitol)
68: Roll Over Beethoven (Capitol)
79: Thank You Girl (Vee Jay)

1968 – Just after 6 p.m., Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord.
King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old.

1973 – The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were officially dedicated.
At 110 stories each, 1 World Trade Center (North Tower) and 2 World Trade Center (South Tower) provided nearly 10 million square feet of office space.
Reaching over a quarter of a mile into the sky, they were the tallest buildings in New York City, and for a brief period, they were the tallest buildings in the world.

1975 – Microsoft was founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Gates, then 19, and 22-year-old Allen initially called their enterprise “Micro-Soft” and formed the company to create a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800 personal computer.
Gates and Allen later dropped the hyphen and moved Microsoft to the Seattle area in 1979 and officially incorporated it in 1981.

1975 – Actor Edgar Buchanan died of complications from a stroke. He was 76.
Buchanan appeared in more than 100 films and portrayed the lead in the 39-episode syndicated Western television series, Judge Roy Bean, but he is best known for his role as Uncle Joe on television’s Petticoat Junction.

2007 – Radio host Don Imus made offensive on-air remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, describing the players as “nappy-headed ‘ho’s.”
Imus subsequently apologized on air (“It was completely inappropriate and we can understand why people were offended. Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, and we are sorry.”), but public outrage cost him his job.
CBS canceled his WFAN morning show, which was syndicated, and his television simulcast on MSNBC was also canceled.

2013 – Film critic Roger Ebert died of cancer at the age of 70.
Ebert and fellow critic Gene Siskel helped popularize nationally televised film reviewing when they co-hosted the PBS show Sneak Previews, followed by several variously named At The Movies programs.
Steven Spielberg stated that Ebert’s “reviews went far deeper than simply thumbs up or thumbs down. He wrote with passion through a real knowledge of film and film history, and in doing so, helped many movies find their audiences.”

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