The Beatles Are Coming!

Today in 1964, the Beatles arrived at JFK Airport in New York City to an enthusiastic welcome. The band had previously been offered chances to tour the United States, but refused to come until they had a #1 song on the American charts. They’d seen other British acts come to the states and fail because no one was familiar with their music. By 1964, the Beatles had a #1 hit with “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and felt primed to take America by storm. Check out this video of their arrival at JFK, where they had a rabid reception from fans.           

Before 1964, George Harrison visited the states on his own to see his sister. For the rest of the band, it was their first time in the country that spawned a majority of their musical influences. Here is a British newsreel showing their first press conference after they landed. Notice the numerous questions about their “long” hair.

[Image via monroegallery]

Golfing at the Most Exclusive Country Club in the World (make that Solar System)

On February 6, 1971 Astronaut Alan Shepherd hit a golf ball on the moon. His fellow astronaut Edgar Mitchell also threw a “javelin” during the same moonwalk. The golf ball and javelin landed in the same crater where they remain to this day.

For Alan Shepherd, this moonwalk and impromptu golf session were the icing on the cake of his astronaut career. He was an Annapolis grad who served on a destroyer during World War II. After the war, he worked as a test pilot and later became part of burgeoning space program. On May 5, 1961, Shepherd became to first American to be launched into space as part of Project Mercury. His flight in Freedom 7 lasted 15 minutes and took him a distance of 301 miles. As commander of the Apollo 14 landing, Shepherd became the fifth person to walk on the moon. In 1974, Shepherd retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy. I guess after you golf on the moon, what else is there to shoot for?

Take a look at Shepherd’s lunar golfing skills:

           

[Image via dailyradar]

Roosevelt, Bankruptcy and the Scary Side of Preservation

The NY Times recently published an article about the ongoing battle to secure the papers of one of FDR’s last secretaries, Grace Tully, for the Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Grace Tully began working for Roosevelt in 1929 when he was governor of New York, and served as his personal secretary from 1941 until his death in 1945. Her papers, which include photographs, official correspondence and handwritten notes, was left to her estate upon her death. Conrad M. Black, now serving time in a Florida prison for a fraud, bought the papers from her estate in 2001. His company, which at the time owned The Chicago-Sun Times, bought the papers from a rare-book dealer for an estimated $8 million. He was collecting the largest amount of FDR papers still in private hands for an FDR biography he planned to write. (“Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom,” published in 2003).

In recent years, Black attempted to auction the papers off at Christies but was stopped when the government accused Black of selling documents which belonged to the National Archives. (The National Archives oversees Presidential Libraries) Still with me?  Since then, the papers have been stored at the Roosevelt Presidential Library, which all parties seem to think will be their eventual home. However, since the ownership of the papers is still being worked out, archivists and researchers have been forbidden to open the sealed boxes to explore what appraisers have called “very, very valuable papers.” I’m not sure how Cynthia Koch, the head of the Roosevelt Presidential Library, can stand having those priceless items so close and yet so far. If it were me, I’d be in there in the middle of the night with a flashlight Watergate style dying to find out what the secretary’s papers could tell us about such an extraordinary time in our nation’s history. Real nerd stuff. Maybe there are revelations in that collection which could confound, complicate, or confirm our understanding of FDR. Who knows? Only time will tell…

The Day The Music Died…

On February 3, 1959, Charles “Buddy” Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. The three musicians were touring the mid-west together as part of “The Winter Dance Party” – a tour covering 24 midwestern cities in three weeks. The bus hired to take the musicians from city to city was faulty, and the heating system died out causing most of the musicians to develop frostbite. In an attempt to bypass another cold bus ride, Buddy Holly chartered a small plane to take his band from Iowa to their next tour stop in Moorhead, Minnesota. Each band member would be charged $36 for the plane ride.

            In what has become a subject of rock and roll legend, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson asked one of Holly’s band members, Waylon Jennings, for his seat on the plane as he was suffering from the flu. Ritchie Valens had never flown in a plane before, and asked Holly’s other band mate, Tommy Allsup, if he could have his seat. Allsup said he would let a coin toss decide, and Valens won the seat. When Buddy Holly heard that his band mate Waylon Jennings would not be accompanying him on the plane, he teased, “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up,” to which Jennings responded, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.” These words would haunt Jennings for the remainder of his life.

            The passengers boarded the plane around 12:40 AM and the plane took off around 12:55 AM. People observing the plane from the control tower in Clear Lake saw the taillight of the plane descend at 1:00 AM. That morning, search teams found the wreckage in a field near Clear Lake, Iowa; all three musicians and the pilot died instantly upon impact. An investigation blamed the crash on a combination of bad weather and pilot error. A large pair of horn rim glasses, like those worn by Buddy Holly, now marks the entrance to the crash site.

            Here is a newsreel showing crash site footage:

            The death of these musicians was a huge loss to rock music, and their legacies are apparent in the influence their music has had on other musicians. The Beatles cited Buddy Holly as a large influence, and they covered his music on Beatles for Sale. Don McLean wrote “American Pie” about “the day the music died.” In more recent years, Weezer named checked Buddy Holly in a song. To celebrate their memory, here is Buddy Holly performing “Peggy Sue” on the Arthur Murray Dance Party. I particularly enjoy the host’s defense of this new thing called rock and roll in her introduction.

[Images via ruhrtalcruising and wikimedia]

Sometimes You Have to Sit Down to Stand Up

To kick off a month in which we remember black history, we would be remiss in neglecting the importance of sit-ins to the civil rights movement. Sit-ins motivated activists, young people in particular, to take up the cause for equal rights by staging sit -ins at restaurants that only offered segregated service. Under the Jim Crow laws in the south, black and whites were expected to use different restrooms, water fountains, schools, and even be served at separate counters at restaurants (among countless other indignities). Sick of being segregated to lesser standards because of the color of their skin, African-American students in the south decided to combat these practices through peaceful protest.

On February 1, 1960, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., and David Richmond (all freshmen at North Carolina A&T University) took seats at the lunch counter of a F.W. Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C. and requested service. The waitress refused their request because of their race. Nonetheless, the four sat steadfast until the close of the store. The next day, the four returned with about 25 more protestors. The sit-in inspired other similar sit-ins across the state, and eventually, throughout the south. By that July (and after an estimated loss of $200,000 worth of business), Woolworth’s integrated all of its stores and allowed blacks to be served at lunch counters.

Today, the site of the first sit-in at the Greensboro, N.C. Woolworth’s was re-opened as an international civil rights museum. Here is a video of the opening along with interviews of the four participants of the February 1^st sit-in.

For more information, please visit the Civil Rights Movement Veterans’ timeline. 

[Image via americanhistory]

Who in the World was Ida May Fuller?

I think I would be stating the obvious if I said that the American economy is struggling right now. Many Americans are bearing tough financial burdens, especially retired men and women. One of the revenue streams that retired people, and others rely on is social security. Social security was enacted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of his New Deal policies in 1935. The hardship faced by Americans today still doesn’t compare to the absolute devastation of the Great Depression, which inspired many New Deal programs.

On January 31, 1940 the first social security check was issued to Ida May Fuller. Ida May Fuller was born in 1874 in Vermont where she spent the majority of her life.   She filed a claim for monthly social security support on November 4, 1939. Most social security is funded by payroll taxes, and Ida May worked for three years contributing to social security. After retiring, Ida May visited her local social security office to see about possible benefits. As Ida May recalled, “It wasn’t that I expected anything, mind you, but I knew that I’d been paying for something called Social Security and I wanted to ask the people in Rutland about it.”

Her information was forwarded to Washington with the first batch of monthly check recipients to be issued a social security payment. She received a check for $22.54, which in today’s money would be about $342.46. Social Security continues to be a hot button issue in American politics. How will we pay for it? Will it still exist in a hundred years? Only time can tell.

[Image via Wikimedia]

The Say Hey Kid Plans to Say Hey (In Print)

The NY Times is reporting that baseball legend Willie Mays has decided to cooperate with a biographer for the first time in telling the story of his hall of fame career. Willie Mays, The Life, The Legend by James S. Hirsch will allow Mays to tell the story of his childhood and baseball career (which will include references to other baseball greats according to the publisher’s webpage.) 

The NY Times piece expresses hesitation about Mays’ cooperation with the writing of his own history in terms of Mays’ skittishness at tackling controversial topics. For example, Mays does not view the segregation he faced in major league baseball as a hindrance, and in fact, attempts to spin it for its advantages (?) Mays also claims ignorance when asked to comment on the controversy of steroids in baseball today (His godson is Barry Bonds). Perhaps, and maybe because of, his idiosyncrasies I can imagine that Mays’ biography will certainly spark further discussion among baseball fans when it appears.

Here is one of the most famous moments of Willie Mays’ career, known simply as “The Catch.” Mays and the New York Giants were taking on the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series. (The Giants went on to win the series)

[Image via achievement]