August 10

This Day in American History


    1588 – This event is mentioned as history may have been quite different for the founding of the United States. The Spanish Armada, a fleet of 130 huge ships, met defeat at the hands of English sailors and their smaller, more maneuverable vessels. Then a series of wicked Atlantic storms off the coast of Southern England took their toll. Only half of the 130 Spanish ships managed to limp ... at best ... home. The 60 or so English ships, plus the weather, saved England from the Spanish invaders.
    1814-Esther Hobart McQuigg Morris was born at Tioga County, NY, but eventually moved to Wyoming Territory, where she worked in the women’s rights movement and had a key role in getting a women’s suffrage bill passed. Morris became justice of the peace of South Pass City, WY, in 1870, one of the first times a woman held public office in the US. She represented Wyoming at the national suffrage convention in 18795. She died April 2, 1902, at Cheyenne, WY.
    1844- Brigham Young chosen Mormon Church head following Joseph Smith death.
    1866-Birthday of Mathew Henson, famous African-American explorer, born at Charles County, MD. He met Robert E. Peary while working in a Washington, DC, store in 1888 and was hired to be Peary’s valet. He accompanied Peary on his seven subsequent Arctic expeditions. During the successful 1908—09 expedition to the North Pole, Henson and two of the four Eskimo guides reached their destination Apr 6, 1909. Peary arrived minutes later and verified the location. Henson’s account of the expedition. A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, was published in 1912. In addition to the Congressional medal awarded all members of the North Pole expedition, Henson received the Gold Medal of the Geographical Society of Chicago and, at 81, was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club at New York, NY. Died Mar 9,1955, at New York, NY.
http://www.matthewhenson.com/
http://www.arcticice.org/henson.htm
    1866-The first queen to visit the United Sates was Queen Emma, widow of King Kamehameha IV of the Sandwich Islands ( later to be re-named Hawaii), who arrived in New York City from England on the Cuuard liner Java. She was received on August 14,1866 by President Andrew Johnson and introduced to his family. American business had already started to invest in the island, bringing coffee, potatoes, hybrid sugarcane, horses and cattle.
    1878 - The temperature at Denver, CO, soars to an all-time record high of 105 degrees.
    1899-Birthday Of Russell Markert, American choreographer Russell Markert, born at Jersey City, NJ. He founded and directed the Radio City Music Hall Rocketts from 1932 to 1971. He died December 1, 1990, at Waterbury, CT.     1899 - A.T. Marshall of Brockton, MA patented the refrigerator. It was not practical in cost for many households and “ice” refrigerators were common until perhaps World War II.
    1876-Thomas Alva Edison of Menlo Park, NJ, obtained a patent for a “method of preparing autographic stencils for printing”. He went on to improve the “mimeograph,” who until the advent of the photocopier, was the most widespread method of paper communication and duplication.
    1896-Birthday of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, American short story writer and novelist ( The Yearling), born at Washington, DC. Rawlings died at St. Augustine, FL, December 14, 1953.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/aug08.html.
    1900-Birthday of bandleader Lucky Millinder, Anniston, AL.
    1911 - Membership in the U.S. House of Representatives was established at 435. Every 211,877 residents of the U.S. were represented by one member of Congress.
1918 –Birthday alto Sax player Benny Carter Birthday (Died July 12,2003)
http://www.bennycarter.com/
http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/ijs/bc/
http://www.jazzradio.org/benny.htm
http://www.riverwalk.org/profiles/carter.htm
    1918-Two days after the Battle of Marne ended, the British Fourth Army mounted an offensive at Amiens with the objective of freeing the Amliens-Paris railways from bombardment by the German Second and Eighteenth Armies. More than 16,000 German prisoners were taken in two hours of fighting the first day. The German forces were forced back to the Hindenburg’s line by September 3. This battle is considered a turning point by many historians because of its impact on the psyche o f Germany. August 8 was described by General Erich Ludendorff as a “Black Day” for Germany.
    1918-MESTROVITCH, JAMES 1. Medal of Honor Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company C, 111th Infantry, 28th Division. Place and date: At Fismette, France, 10 August 1918. Entered service at: Pittsburgh, Pa. Birth: Montenegro. G.O. No.: 20, W.D., 1919. Citation: Seeing his company commander Iying wounded 30 yards in front of the line after his company had withdrawn to a sheltered position behind a stone wall, Sgt. Mestrovitch voluntarily left cover and crawled through heavy machinegun and shell fire to where the officer lay. He took the officer upon his back and crawled to a place of safety, where he administered first-aid treatment, his exceptional heroism saving the officer's life.
    1923-Birthday of singer Jimmy Witherspoon, Gurdon,AR.
    1926-Birthday of trombonist Urbie Green, Mobile, AL.
    1922-Louis Armstrong, 22 years old, leaves for the Windy City. His autobiography is fascinating to read about his version of the beginnings of jazz. He perhaps is not only the best known jazz musicians, but considered even today to have been quite ahead of his time. On old records, it is easy to pick him out playing the trumpet. He had tone, melody and rhythm that still wants you to sing, dance, or tap your foot.
    1923 - Benny Goodman was 14 years old as he began his professional career as a clarinet player. He took a job in a band on a Chicago-based excursion boat on Lake Michigan.
    1932-Birthday of singer/songwriter Mel Tillis, Pahokee,FL. Tillis was the Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year . Equally talented as a singer and as a songwriter, Tillis began his hit-making career in 1958 with "The Violet and the Rose." His top-ten singles have included "Who's Julie," "The Arms of a Fool" and "Memory Maker." Tillis has a speech impediment, but has made his stuttering a part of his act.
    1933-Louisiana Governor O.K.Allen pardon’s Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as the folksinger “Leadbelly.,” He got the name while in prison in Texas for being very strong. He was a very big man with an explosive temper, and was in for murder. He was pardoned by Texas Governor Pat Neff from a thirty year sentence, something that was unheard of in Texas and from the very conservative Neff, but it is said, he sang a song of why he should be released that so affect the warden, and then Neff, that they released him. Leadbelly was one of my father’s favorite folksingers, that he played all the time, and my first memories of my father are listening to this music in the forties. I remember sitting on his knee, perhaps the earliest recollection of my father, who I miss more and more as each year goes by.
http://www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/fame/ledbet.html
http://www.blueflamecafe.com/index.html
http://members.fortunecity.com/kgerald/personel/LedbetterHuddie.htm
http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/Leadbelly/biog.html
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~mcneil/cit/citlcleadbelly.htm
    1933-The first savings and loan association established by the federal government was the first Federal Savings and Loan Association of Miami, Florida. The creation of savings and loan institutions had been authorized by the Home Owners Loan Act of June 13, 1933, to provide a convenient place for the investment of small and large sums and to lend money to local applicants for first mortgages.
    1941 - Les Brown and His Band of Renown paid tribute to baseball’s ‘Yankee Clipper’, Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees, with the recording of "Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio" on Okeh Records. From that time on, DiMaggio adopted the nickname, Joltin’ Joe.
    1942-Adding to the fear of the times from both the war in the Pacific and Atlantic, this event is forgotten by many today. Six Germans were electrocuted this day in 1942 in Washington, DC. They were part of a group of eight who were tried by a military commission of seven generals. One saboteur, George John Dasch, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and another Ernest Peter Bruger, received a life sentence. All eight were found guilty of landing in rubber boats from enemy submarines, carrying explosives, incendiaries, fuses, detonators timing devices, acids, and similar material. Four of them landed on June 13, 1942, at Amagansett, NY, on Long Island, and were discovered by Seamen Second Class John C. Cullen of the Amagansett Coast Guard Station. Four others landed on June 17, 1942, at Poine Vedra Beach near Jacksonville, FL.
    1951-Birthday of Randy Shilts, journalist known for his reporting on the AIDS epidemic. One of the first openly homosexual journalists to work for a mainstream newspaper and the author of And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic. Born at Davenport, IA, and died at Guerneville, CA, Feb 17, 1994.
    1951---Top Hits
Too Young - Nat King Cole
Mister and Mississippi - Patti Page
Because of You - Tony Bennett
I Wanna Play House with You - Eddy Arnold
    1955-Two weeks after it cracks the R&B Top Ten, Chuck Berry's "Maybellene" enters the Pop chart at #23.
    1959---Top Hits
Lonely Boy - Paul Anka
A Big Hunk o’ Love - Elvis Presley
My Heart is an Open Book - Carl Dobkins, Jr.
Waterloo - Stonewall Jackson
    1960- British Decca destroyed 25,000 copies of Ray Peterson's death-rock song, "Tell Laura I Love Her." The company refused to release a song which it said was "too tasteless and vulgar for the English sensibility." A rival firm, however, had no such compunction, recording a cover version by a singer named Ricky Valance, which went to number one on the British chart. In the US, Ray Peterson's recording of "Tell Laura I Love Her" reached number seven on the Billboard pop chart.
    1963-Little Stevie Wonder had the number 1 song in America this week with "Fingertips - Pt. 2". Stevie was just 13 years old when the song was recorded.
    1967---Top Hits
Light My Fire - The Doors
All You Need is Love - The Beatles
A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum
I’ll Never Find Another You - Sonny James
    1968- Race riot in Miami Florida.
    1968-The Bubblegum Music craze was in full gear when a group from Linden, New Jersey, who went by the unusual name of The 1910 Fruitgum Co. cracked the Hot 100 with their second hit, "123 Red Light". The record would climb to number five in the US.
    1969-Photographer Iain Macmillan took six pictures of the Beatles crossing the street outside their Abbey Road studio in London. A police officer held up traffic while the band walked back and forth several times. Paul McCartney chose one of the pictures for the cover of the "Abbey Road" album.
    1970-New York Yankees honor Casey Stengel, retiring his number 37.
    1970-CCR's "Looking Out My Back Door" is released.
    1970- Janis Joplin bought a tombstone for blues singer Bessie Smith's unmarked grave in a Philadelphia cemetery. Less than two months later, Joplin herself was dead of a drug overdose. Smith had died following an auto accident in 1942 at the age of 37.
    1973-Vice-President Spiro T Agnew brands them "damned lies" regarding reports he took kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland. He vowed not to resign; that he was innocent.
    1974-President Richard Nixon announced in a televised address that he would resign. Three days earlier he had released tape transcripts revealing he had impeded the Watergate investigation. Nixon told an audience of some 100,000,000, he had made some wrong decisions but that he was resigning because he no longer had enough support in Congress.
    1974-Eric Clapton receives a gold record for "461 Ocean Boulevard." It's his comeback album and contains his Number One version of "I Shot the Sheriff." The album reaches the top of the charts.
    1974 - Roberta Flack received a gold record for the single, "Feel Like Makin’ Love". Flack, born in Asheville, NC and raised in Arlington, VA, was awarded a music scholarship to Howard University in Washington, DC -- at the age of 15. One of her classmates became a singing partner on several hit songs. Donny Hathaway joined Flack on "You’ve Got a Friend", "Where is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You". She had 10 hits on the pop charts in the 1970s and 1980s.
    1974-Roberta Flack scored her third US number one hit with "Feel Like Makin' Love". It was a song that she was forced to mix herself after her producer quit in the middle of her fifth album. In a vague reference to her first effort, she took producer's credit on the LP as Rubina Flake.
    1975---Top Hits
One of These Nights - Eagles
Jive Talkin’ - Bee Gees
Please Mr. Please - Olivia Newton-John
Just Get Up and Close the Door - Johnny Rodriguez
    1975- country singer Hank Williams Junior suffered severe head injuries when he fell 150 metres while mountain climbing in Montana. When he returned to performing months later, he had switched to a country-rock sound from the pure country style made famous by his father.
    1976-The Chicago White Sox made baseball sartorial history by donning shorts for a game against the Kansas City Royals. The Sox won, 5-2, but the shorts, a novelty thought up by owner Bill Veeck, lasted only a while.
    1981-Shiaway St. Pat, driven by Ray Remmen, won the Hambletonia, the most important race for three-year-old trotters, contested for the first time at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.
    1983---Top Hits
Every Breath You Take - The Police
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics
She Works Hard for the Money - Donna Summer
Your Love’s on the Line - Earl Thomas Conley
    1984 - Carl Lewis won his third gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics. He won the 200-meter sprint. At the same time, Greg Louganis received his first gold medal in diving in the springboard competition.
    1986- singer David Crosby, sentenced to a five-year term for drug and weapons charges, was paroled from a prison in Huntsville, Texas after serving only five months. The convictions were overturned by a Texas appeals court in November 1987- Crosby said when he was released that he had kicked a ten-year drug habit and wanted to resume his musical career. He gained fame with the Byrds in the late 1960's, then teamed with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young.
    1987 - Less than three months after they go to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 for the first time with "With or Without You," U2 return to the top of the chart with "I Still Haven't Found what I'm Looking For," the second single from "The Joshua Tree."( A birthday present for the Edge.)
    1988-The first night game of Chicago’s Wrigley Field was postponed by rain with the Cubs leading the Philadelphia Phillies 3-1, in the bottom of the fourth inning. The Phillies’ Phil Bradley let off the game with a home run, but in a postponed game, all statistics are washed out.
    1990- Iraq annexes Kuwait. The US has been sending troops to Saudi Arabia and moving the US Navy into the Mediterranean seas.
    1991---Top Hits
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You - Bryan Adams
P.A.S.S.I.O.N. - Rythm Syndicate
Summertime - D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
She’s in Love with the Boy - Trisha Yearwood
    1993-The Dream Team, a specially-assembled team of NBA all-stars, defeated Crotia, 117-85, to win the gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. The Dream Team, coached by Chuck Daly, including Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Christian Laettner, Karl Malone, Chris Mullin, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson and John Stockton.
    1994- Janet Jackson tied Aretha Franklin for the most gold singles by a female artist - 14 - when "Any Time, Any Place" was certified as having sold more than 500,000 copies.
    1995- the Canadian stage production of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" opened at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto. At $17 million, it was the most expensive stage production in Canadian history.
    1998-The largest free jazz festival in the world, San Jose, California, draws 200,000 to hear Sandoval, Broadbent, Schuur, among many others
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