The Ottoman Empire suffered its first defeat on this day, they were hammered badly losing over half of their ships to the "Holy League" and a brilliant young Austrian tactician. The long term impact was minimal, it's of interest because Miguel de Cervantes was shot three times losing the use of his left hand, and because it fits so well with another item. Specifically, the highest score ever in an American football game was run up on this day by the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. No first downs, and Georgia Tech never passed the ball. No current TV announcer could broadcast a game like it I'm sure.
Marian Anderson had to battle racial prejudice much of her life, had she been white she would have had the world at her feet. She sang opera to receptive crowds in Europe much earlier, but it took until 1955 before she debuted with the Met. She got the contract on this day in 1954, and I picked quotes on the theme of song to go with it.
Some insist on calling it "the dark side of the moon," which it isn't. The Soviets gave us the first glimpse of the far side of the moon barely two years after they launched Sputnik. The camera in the craft shot film, processed it, and then scanned it for transmission. The craft was called Lunik III, although there is some question as to whether or not Lunik I was ever actually launched, no signals were received in the west and Jodrell Bank was unable to track it.
We also have the exciting night that ended the career of Wilbur Mills, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, and Libya celebrates another holiday based on throwing a group of people out of their country - something they do three times a year. (The celebration, not the deportation.)
1571 - A Venetian fleet led by Don John of Austria and augmented by an alliance with the Pope, Spain, and several Italian city states decisively defeated the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto off the Greek coast, capturing 117 galleys (over half the Ottoman fleet) and freeing more than 1,000 Christian slaves. It was the first major defeat of the Ottoman Empire but not strategically significant as the Turks promptly rebuilt.
1916 - The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football team, coached by John Heisman, defeated Cumberland College 222-0. There were no first downs, Cumberland couldn't make one, and the Golden Tornado scored on every possession. Reader's Digest called it the "Little Big Horn of football."
1954 - Rudolf Bing, general manager of New York City's Metropolitan Opera Company signed contralto Marian Anderson for an upcoming performance of Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" (A Masked Ball). At 57 she was well past her prime, but her career had continually broken barriers and dissolved hostility to black performers making her the prefect candidate to become the first black on that company's stage.
1959 - The third Soviet spacecraft launched to the vicinity of the moon, Lunik III, passed over the moon's south pole and took 29 images of the terrain on the far side. The 279 kg cylindrical craft approached within 6200 km, the images returned were the first pictures of the far side of the moon.
1974 - U.S. Park Police stopped a limo near the Tidal Basin at Washington City for driving without lights, while questioning the occupants, including House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills, one occupant ran from the car and jumped into the water. The congressman's face was bleeding, the woman who ran was an ecdysiast named Annabel Battistella who performed as "Fanne Fox, the Argentine Firecracker."
1985 - Four heavily-armed members of the Palestinian terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) boarded the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro at port in Alexandria, Egypt and hijack her. They demanded that Israel release PFLP members from prison, and killed a wheelchair-bound 69-year-old American tourist named Leon Klinghoffer. After the ship returned to Egypt the terrorists and their handler attempted to escape by air but US Air Force fighters forced them to Italy where the gunmen were tried and convicted.
Expulsion of the Fascist Settlers Day, Libya - During 1970, the year after Moammar Qaddafi came to power, thousands of Italians were deported. Also called Italian Evacuation Day, the third of three such holidays on Libya's calendar.
If you want to make a song more hummy, add a few tiddely poms.
- Alan Alexander Milne, Pooh
Bear
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
- Dorothy Rothschild Parker
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing
much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down
my sleeve and come out on the page.
- Joan Baez
I value my garden more for being full [of] blackbirds than of cherries,
and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
- Joseph Addison
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