On August 15…

“The important thing that you’ve proven to the world is that a half a million kids – and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you are – a half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music, and I God Bless You for it!”
~Max Yasgur / owner of Bethel, NY farm
Site of the Woodstock Music Festival

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1914 – The Panama Canal was formally opened with the passage of the Panama Railway steamship SS Ancon. The United States spent almost $375 million (roughly equivalent to $8.6 billion today) to complete the project.

1914 – While renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a cook who had been hired several months earlier, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin – Wright’s Wisconsin home, and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned.
Carlton had been told he was being fired, and the 15th would be his last day. Waiting until noon when much activity at Taliesin stopped for lunch, Carlton took an axe and came onto the porch just off the living room of the main house.
After his frenzied attack, he poured gasoline around the house and set it on fire.
In the basement of the burning house, he swallowed a vial of hydrochloric acid. It didn’t kill him but it left him unable to digest food.
Carlton lived for only seven and a half more weeks.

1930 – President Herbert Hoover announced plans for relief of individuals and businesses affected by a series of devastating droughts.
The droughts, combined with a major stock market crash in October 1929, resulted in dire economic conditions in the country that lasted throughout the early to mid-1930s, an era known as the “Great Depression.”
Hoover called for a mass mobilization of aid workers in response to the drought; asked state governors to organize committees to draft suggestions on how to aid the unemployed; and tasked the Red Cross with getting immediate aid to impoverished families.
He asked the War Department to provide artillery range land to Montana cattle and sheep farmers for grazing. He also proposed increasing federal money to drought-stricken areas to begin road-building programs for unemployed workers.
Hoover’s primarily state-led relief plan was not enough. As economic conditions worsened over the next two years, growing numbers of Americans plunged into poverty.
Hoover and his wife were criticized for maintaining a lavish lifestyle in the White House. This perceived lack of concern on the part of the president for his fellow citizens, combined with his reluctance to implement government spending relief programs, resulted in his re-election defeat in 1932.

1935 – Humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska.
They were a few miles from Point Barrow when they became uncertain of their position in bad weather and landed in a lagoon to gather information.
On takeoff, the engine failed at low altitude and the airplane plunged into the lagoon, shearing off the right wing and landed upside down in the water.
Both men died instantly.

1941 – Corporal Josef Jakobs, a German spy who had parachuted into England and later been convicted under the Treachery Act of 1940, was executed at the Tower of London.
In deference to his being a soldier, he was allowed shooting by firing squad rather than the civilian method of hanging.
The last person to be executed at the Tower for espionage – and unable to stand because of a broken ankle suffered in the parachute drop – Jakobs was seated in a chair when he was shot.
His final words: “Shoot straight, Tommies!”
As seen in the photo above, the broken spindles in the chair Jakobs sat in indicate the soldiers – aiming at his heart – did indeed shoot straight.

1945 – Following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese Emperor Hirohito publicly announced that the Japanese government had accepted the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of the Japanese military.
In his speech – which had been recorded a day earlier – Hirohito noted “the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.”
Finally, and most famously, he said: “However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.”

1961 – In one of the most iconic photos of the Cold War, border guard Conrad Schumann fled from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall.

1965 – The Beatles’ record-breaking first performance at New York’s Shea Stadium was watched by 55,600 fans.
The 12-song, 30-minute concert set a (then) world record for attendance figures, and also for gross revenue. The Beatles pocketed $160,000 of the $304,000 box office sales.

1969 – The three-day Woodstock Music Festival opened on a patch of farmland in White Lake, a hamlet in the upstate New York town of Bethel.
Promoters John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang originally planned on holding the event in Woodstock or the nearby town of Wallkill, but when both towns denied permission to host the event.
Dairy farmer Max Yasgur came to the rescue at the last minute, giving the promoters access to his 600 acres of land in Bethel, some 50 miles from Woodstock.
Despite their relative inexperience, the young promoters managed to sign a roster of top acts, including Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie; Santana; Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Grateful Dead, Sly & The Family Stone, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and many more.
Somewhat improbably, the chaotic gathering of half a million young people lived up to its billing of “Three Days of Peace and Music”. There were surprisingly few incidents of violence on the overcrowded grounds and the festival still stands for many as an example of America’s 1960s youth counterculture at its best.
The festival got off to a shaky start. Several hours after the scheduled kickoff time, not a note of music had been played. Organizers convinced Havens to go on stage alone with his guitar and entertain the hundreds of thousands waiting for the music to begin. Each time he tried to finish his set, he found himself being talked into going back out. But after two hours and 45 minutes of playing, Havens ran out of material.
So he improvised. Over the intensely rhythmic strum of his own acoustic, Havens composed a festival-inspired song called Freedom on the spot, building on a snatch of the traditional Motherless Child.

1971 – In addition to announcing a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents, president Richard Nixon completed the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.
While Nixon’s actions did not formally abolish the existing Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange, the suspension of one of its key components effectively rendered the system inoperative.
Nixon publicly stated his intention to resume direct convertibility of the dollar after reforms to the system had been implemented, but all attempts at reform proved unsuccessful.

1979 – Apocalypse Now, starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper, premiered in theaters around the United States.
The film became a commercial success and won two Academy Awards (Best Cinematography and Best Sound). It received six other Oscar nominations, including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor (Duvall).

2008 – Music producer Jerry Wexler died of congestive heart failure at the age of 91.
A former editor at Billboard magazine, Wexler became a partner and producer at Atlantic Records, and was integral in signing and/or producing many of the biggest acts of the 50s, 60s and 70s, including Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Wilson Pickett, Dire Straits, Dusty Springfield and Bob Dylan.
Wexler was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

2021 – Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul was captured by the Taliban after a major insurgent offensive that began in May 2021.
It was the final action of the War in Afghanistan, and marked a total victory for the Taliban. This led to the overthrowing of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan under President Ashraf Ghani and the reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2024 RayLemire.com./Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.