“They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? – – Carpe – – hear it? – – Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”
~Robin Williams, as John Keating in ‘Dead Poets Society’
1924 – With Congressional passage of the Indian Citizenship Act signed by President Calvin Coolidge, the government of the United States conferred citizenship on all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the country.
However, the Act did not include citizens born before the effective date of the 1924 act, or outside of the United States as an indigenous person.
It was not until the Nationality Act of 1940 that all born on U.S. soil were citizens.
1941 – Baseball Hall of Fame legend Lou Gehrig died at the age of 37 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable neuromuscular illness now commonly referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s disease”.
He was an All-Star seven consecutive times, American League Most Valuable Player twice, and a member of six World Series champion teams, all with the New York Yankees. He had a career .340 batting average, hit 493 home runs and had 1,995 runs batted in.
In 1939, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and was the first Major League player to have his uniform number (4) retired by a team.
1944 – American bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force launched Operation Frantic, a series of bombing raids over Central Europe.
Taking off from air bases in southern Italy, the bomber landed at bases in Poltava, in the Soviet Union, in an exercise called “shuttle bombing”.
The Fifteenth was recruited by a desperate Joseph Stalin to help the Red Army in its campaign in Romania.
In exchange for the Fifteenth’s assistance, Stalin allowed the American bombers to land at air bases within the Soviet Union as they carried out Operation Frantic, a plan to devastate German industrial regions in occupied Silesia, Hungary, and Romania.
1948 – Justice was administered at Landsberg Prison when four physicians and three German officers were hanged after being found guilty of war crimes at the “Doctors’ trial” in Nuremberg the previous year.
The physicians included Karl Brandt (Adolf Hitler’s escort doctor and co-chief of the Aktion T4 euthanasia program), Karl Gebhardt (Heinrich Himmler’s personal physician), Waldemar Hoven (Chief Doctor of the Buchenwald concentration camp), and Joachim Mrugowsky (Coordinator of human experimentation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp).
The Nazi officers included Viktor Brack (Chief Administrative Officer in the Chancellery of the Führer), Rudolf Brandt (Personal Administrative Officer to Himmler), and Wolfram Sievers (Director of the Institute for Military Scientific Research).
1953 – Queen Elizabeth II was formally crowned monarch of the United Kingdom in a lavish ceremony steeped in traditions that date back a millennium.
A thousand dignitaries and guests attended the coronation at London’s Westminster Abbey, and hundreds of millions listened on radio and for the first time watched the proceedings on live television.
Millions of rain-drenched spectators then cheered the 27-year-old queen and her husband, the 30-year-old duke of Edinburgh, as they passed along a five-mile procession route in a gilded horse-drawn carriage.
Elizabeth had actually been proclaimed Britain’s new monarch in February 1952 upon the death of her father, King George VI. She remained in seclusion for the first three months of her reign as she mourned her father.
During the summer of 1952, she began to perform routine duties of the sovereign, and in November she carried out her first state opening of the Parliament.
1956 – Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps released Be-Bop-A-Lula.
The song was successful on three American singles charts: it peaked at #7 on the Billboard pop music chart, #8 on the R&B chart, and also made the top ten on the Country-Western Best Seller chart peaking at #5.
1967 – Capt. Howard Levy, 30, a dermatologist from Brooklyn, was convicted by a general court-martial in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, of willfully disobeying orders and making disloyal statements about U.S. policy in Vietnam.
Levy had refused to provide elementary instruction in skin disease to Green Beret medics because he believed the Green Berets would use medicine as “another tool of political persuasion” in Vietnam.
Levy, invoked the so-called “Nuremberg defense,” justifying his refusal on grounds that the Green Berets would use the training for criminal purposes. Levy’s civilian attorney also argued that training the Green Berets compelled him to violate canons of medical ethics.
The court was not persuaded and the ten-officer jury found him guilty on all charges, sentencing him to three years at hard labor and dismissal from the service.
1977 – Actor Stephen Boyd died of a massive heart attack at the of 45.
He appeared in over 60 films, most notably as Messala in 1959’s Ben-Hur, a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. He received his second Golden Globe Award nomination for Billy Rose’s Jumbo in 1962.
1989 – Dead Poets Society, a boys’ prep school drama starring Robin Williams, was released in selected U.S. theaters.
Set in 1959 at a fictional all-male preparatory school called Welton Academy, the film starred Williams as John Keating, a charismatic English teacher who encourages his students to “seize the day” (“carpe diem” in Latin) and embrace the passion for life expressed by great poets.
Williams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, one of four nominations the film would receive, including Best Director and Best Picture.
It won in one category, for Best Original Screenplay.
1990 – Sir Reginald “Rex” Harrison died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 82.
Harrison appeared in numerous films, including Anna and The King of Siam, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cleopatra, and played the title role in Doctor Dolittle.
He was best known for his portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins in the 1964 film version of My Fair Lady, for which Harrison won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
1997 – Timothy McVeigh, a former U.S. Army soldier, was convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City which killed 168 people.
2006 – In recognition of its place in music history, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios building in Sheffield, Alabama, was named to the National Historic Register.
No, it doesn’t look impressive but the small stone building at 3614 Jackson Highway attracted an incredible array of legendary musicians after the studio’s founding in 1969.
Here is just a small sample of the songs recorded there:
The Staple Singers (Respect Yourself), Paul Simon (Kodachrome and Loves Me Like A Rock), Bob Seger (Night Moves, Old Time Rock and Roll, and Katmandu), Rolling Stones (Brown Sugar and Wild Horses), Julian Lennon (Valotte), Lynyrd Skynyrd (Gimme Three Steps), and Bob Dylan (Gotta Serve Somebody).
2008 – Musician Bo Diddley died of heart failure at the age of 79.
He will forever be known for popularizing one of the foundational rhythms of rock and roll: the Bo Diddley beat filled with indelible African rhythms.
He employed it in his namesake song, Bo Diddley, as well as other primal rockers like Mona and Who Do You Love.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
2012 – Actor Richard Dawson died from complications of esophageal cancer at the age of 79.
Dawson was well known for playing Corporal Peter Newkirk on Hogan’s Heroes from 1965-1971, and later was a panelist on Match Game for five seasons.
He found lasting fame as the host of Family Feud from 1976-1985 and 1994-1995.
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2019 RayLemire.com. / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.