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This Day In History~ Link Share August 17th
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
Woodstock!
Woodstock Music Festival concludes
On August 17, 1969, the grooviest event in music history–the Woodstock Music & Art Fair–draws to a close after three days of peace, love and rock ‘n’ roll in upstate New York.
Conceived as “Three Days of Peace and Music,” Woodstock was a product of a partnership between John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang. Their idea was to make enough money from the event to build a recording studio near the arty New York town of Woodstock. When they couldn’t find an appropriate venue in the town itself, the promoters decided to hold the festival on a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York—some 50 miles from Woodstock—owned by Max Yasgur.
READ MORE: The 8 Most Memorable Performances at Woodstock
By the time the weekend of the festival arrived, the group had sold a total of 186,000 tickets and expected no more than 200,000 people to show up. By Friday night, however, thousands of eager early arrivals were pushing against the entrance gates. Fearing they could not control the crowds, the promoters made the decision to open the concert to everyone, free of charge. Close to half a million people attended Woodstock, jamming the roads around Bethel with eight miles of traffic.
Soaked by rain and wallowing in the muddy mess of Yasgur’s fields, young fans best described as “hippies” euphorically took in the performances of acts like Janis Joplin, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. The Who performed in the early morning hours of August 17, with Roger Daltrey belting out “See Me, Feel Me,” from the now-classic album Tommy just as the sun began to rise. The most memorable moment of the concert for many fans was the closing performance by Jimi Hendrix, who gave a rambling, rocking solo guitar performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
READ MORE: 5 Reasons Why Woodstock ’69 Became Legendary
With not enough bathroom facilities and first-aid tents to accommodate such a huge crowd, many described the atmosphere at the festival as chaotic. There were surprisingly few episodes of violence, though one teenager was accidentally run over and killed by a tractor and another died from a drug overdose. A number of musicians performed songs expressing their opposition to the Vietnam War, a sentiment that was enthusiastically shared by the vast majority of the audience. Later, the term “Woodstock Nation” would be used as a general term to describe the youth counterculture of the 1960s.
A 25th anniversary celebration of Woodstock took place in 1994 in Saugerties, New York. Known as Woodstock II, the concert featured Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills and Nash as well as newer acts such as Nine Inch Nails and Green Day. Held over another rainy, muddy weekend, the event drew an estimated 300,000 people. A major 50th anniversary festival was planned for 2019, but never came to fruition.
READ MORE: How a Music Festival That Should’ve Been a Disaster Became Iconic Instead
Citation Information
Article Title
Woodstock Music Festival concludes
Author
Website Name
HISTORY
URL
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/woodstock-music-festival-concludes
Access Date
August 17, 2020
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
August 13, 2020
Original Published Date
November 24, 2009BY HISTORY.COM EDITORS
This content was pasted and copied from the original source. Their link is in the content. I am not the author of this content. Thank you for use of this material. MwsR
This Day IN History, July 27th
Important Events
- 1542 Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sets sail from the Mexican port of Navidad to explore the west coast of North America on behalf of the Spanish Empire
- 1693 1st women’s magazine “Ladies’ Mercury” published (London)
- 1743 War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Dettingen: in Bavaria, King George II of Britain personally leads troops into battle. The last time a British monarch commanded troops in the field.
- 1929 1st color TV demo, performed by Bell Laboratories in NYC
- 1950 North Korean troops reach Seoul, UN asks members to aid South Korea, Harry Truman orders US Air Force & Navy into the Korean conflict
- 1954 1st atomic power station opens – Obninsk, near Moscow in Russia
- 678 St Agatho begins his reign as Catholic Pope
- The 1358 Republic of Dubrovnik is founded
Some Famous Birthdays On This Day
From Way Back
- 1040 Ladislaus I, King of Hungary, born in the Kingdom of Poland (d. 1095)
- 1350 Manuel II Palaeologus, Byzantine Emperor (1391-1425) (d. 1425)
- 1462 Louis XII, the Just, King of France (1498-1515), born in Château de Blois, France (d. 1515)
- 1550 Charles IX [Carl], King of France (1560-74), born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France (d. 1574)
- 1615 Johann Paul Schor, German Baroque painter, born in Innsbruck, Austria (d. 1674)
- 1696 William Pepperrell, British colonial soldier, born in Kittery, Maine (d. 1759)
- 1717 Louis Guillaume Lemonnier, French botanist and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, born in Paris (d. 1799)
- 1718 Wenzel Raimund Pirck, composer, born in Vienna, Austria (d. 1763)
- 1745 Johann Nepomuk Went, Bohemian composer, born in Vinařice, Czech Republic (d. 1801)
- 1787 Thomas Say, American naturalist and father of descriptive entomology, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (d. 1834)
- 1789 Philipp Friedrich Silcher, German composer, born in Weinstadt, Germany (d. 1860)
- 1805 Stephen Elvey, English composer, born in Canterbury, Kent, England (d. 1860)
- 1806 Napoléon Coste, French guitarist and composer, born in Besançon, France (d. 1883)
- 1809 François Certain Canrobert, French marshal and parliament member, born in Saint-Céré, France (d. 1895)
- 1812 John Pike Hullah, English composer, born in Worcester (d. 1884)
- 1819 Carl Albert Löschhorn, German composer, born in Berlin, Germany (d. 1905)
- 1821 August Conradi, German organist, and composer, born in Berlin (d. 1873)
- 1828 Junius Daniel, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), born in Halifax, North Carolina (d. 1864)
- 1833 Władysław Zaremba, Ukrainian composer, born in Dunajowce, Ukraine (d 1902)
- 1838 Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Indian novelist (Anandamath), born in Naihati, Bengal Presidency, British India (d. 1894)
- 1838 Paul Mauser, German weapon designer, born in Oberndorf am Neckar, Kingdom of Württemberg (d. 1914)
- 1842 Jamie Anderson, Scottish golfer (British Open 1877-79), born in St. Andrews, Fife (d. 1905)
- 1846 Charles Stewart Parnell, English-Irish Home Rule Party leader, born in Avondale, County Wicklow, Ireland (d. 1891)
- 1849 Harriet Hubbard Ayer, American cosmetics manufacturer and columnist, born in Chicago (d. 1903)
- 1850 Ivan Vazov, Bulgarian poet, novelist and playwright (Under the Yoke), born in Sopot, Bulgaria (d. 1921)
- 1850 Jacob Adolf Hägg, Swedish composer, born in Östergarn, Sweden (d. 1928)
- 1850 Lafcadio Hearn, American author (Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan), born in Leucas, Greece (d. 1904)
- 1850 Jørgen Pedersen Gram, Danish mathematician (Gram–Schmidt process), born in Duchy of Schleswig, Denmark (d. 1919)
- 1859 Mildred J. Hill, American composer and musician (Happy Birthday To You), born in Louisville, Kentucky (d. 1916)
- 1862 May Irwin, Canadian comedienne and singer (Hot Time in the Old Town), born in Whitby, Ontario, Canada (d. 1938)
- 1869 Emma Goldman, American anarchist and publisher (Mother Earth), born in Kovno, Lithuania, Russian Empire (d. 1940)
- 1869 Kate Carew [Mary Williams], American caricaturist, born in Oakland, California (d. 1961)
- 1869 Hans Spemann, German embryologist (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1935), born in Stuttgart, Germany (d. 1941)
- 1985 Nico Rosberg, German Finnish race car driver (F1 World Champion 2016), born in Wiesbaden, West Germany
- 1985 James Hook, Welsh rugby player, born in Port Talbot, Wales
Closer To Present Day
1986 LaShawn Merritt, American sprinter, born in Portsmouth, Virginia
1986 Drake Bell, American actor, voice actor, and musician, born in Newport Beach, California
1987 Ed Westwick, English actor (Gossip Girl), born in London, England
1988 Kate Ziegler, American swimmer, born in Fairfax, Virginia
1989 Matthew Lewis, English actor (The Syndicate), born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
1990 Aselin Debison, Canadian singer (Bigger than me), born in Glace Bay, Canada
1991 Madylin Sweeten, American actress (Everybody Loves Raymond), born in Brownwood, Texas
1999 Chandler Riggs, American actor (The Walking Dead), born in Atlanta, Georgia
QUIZ
- In which country was the world’s oldest parliament established this week in 930 AD?
England
Italy
Iceland
United States of America
- Who was the 1st African American to be nominated for US President?
Frederick Douglass
Booker T. Washington
James Weldon JohnsonMarcus Garvey
- What medical advance was made available to the US public this week in 1960?
- Polio Vaccine
- Contraceptive pill
- Ultrasound
- Measles vaccine
- Who is this British person, a major figure in WWI, and born this week in 1850?
- John French
- David Lloyd George
- Horatio Kitchener
- Douglas Haig
- What is the American town of Yerba Buena, site of the 1st European building on the west coast now known as?
- San Diego
- Los Angeles
- Seattle
- San Francisco
- Which classic sci-fi film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford was released this week in 1982?
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
- Alien
- Blade Runner
- Poltergeist
- Which composer wrote the opera The Valkyrie, which premiered in 1870, featuring the famous “Ride of the Valkyries”?
Richard Wagner
Giacomo Puccini
Giuseppe Verdi
Igor Stravinsky
- Who delivered their famous speech this week in West Berlin in 1963 by announcing “Ich bin ein Berliner”?
Angela Merkel
Nikita Khrushchev
John F. Kennedy
Harold Macmillan
- What year did the US Supreme Court rule in favor of same-sex marriage?
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- Finnish author and artist Tove Jansson died this week in 2001, what series of books is she famous for?
- Madeline series
- Paddington Bear
- Barbar the elephant
- The Moomins
- Your Score
- People find this quiz a good challenge! Try Another Weekly History Quiz
- Weekly Quiz June 1 – 7
- May 25 – 31
- May 4 -10
Try Another History Quiz
This Day In History!
James Earl Ray, suspect in Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, is arrested
James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in London, England, and charged with the assassination of African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, King was fatally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. That evening, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.
On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. Ray was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
READ MORE: America in Mourning After MLK’s Shocking Assassination
Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King’s assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named “Raoul” had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning enterprise. On April 4, 1968, however, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled for Canada. Ray’s motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29 years.
This Day In History
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“Dracula” goes on sale in London
The first copies of the classic vampire novel Dracula, by Irish writer Bram Stoker, appear in London bookshops on May 26, 1897.
A childhood invalid, Stoker grew up to become a football (soccer) star at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduation, he got a job in civil service at Dublin Castle, where he worked for the next 10 years while writing drama reviews for the Dublin Mail on the side. In this way, Stoker met the well-respected actor Sir Henry Irving, who hired him as his manager. Stoker stayed in the post for most of the next three decades, writing Irving’s voluminous correspondence for him and accompanying him on tours in the United States. Over the years, Stoker began writing a number of horror stories for magazines, and in 1890 he published his first novel, The Snake’s Pass.
Stoker would go on to publish 17 novels in all, but it was his 1897 novel Dracula that eventually earned him literary fame and became known as a masterpiece of Victorian-era Gothic literature. Written in the form of diaries and journals of its main characters, Dracula is the story of a vampire who makes his way from Transylvania—a region of Eastern Europe now in Romania—to Yorkshire, England, and preys on innocents there to get the blood he needs to live. Stoker had originally named the vampire “Count Wampyr.” He found the name Dracula in a book on Wallachia and Moldavia written by retired diplomat William Wilkinson, which he borrowed from a Yorkshire public library during his family’s vacations there.
Vampires–who left their burial places at night to drink the blood of humans–were popular figures in folk tales from ancient times, but Stoker’s novel catapulted them into the mainstream of 20th-century literature. Upon its release, Dracula enjoyed moderate success, though when Stoker died in 1912 none of his obituaries even mentioned Dracula by name. Sales began to take off in the 1920s, when the novel was adapted for Broadway. Dracula mania kicked into even higher gear with Universal’s blockbuster 1931 film, directed by Tod Browning and starring the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi. Dozens of vampire-themed movies, television shows and literature followed, though Lugosi, with his exotic accent, remains the quintessential Count Dracula. Late 20th-century examples of the vampire craze include the bestselling novels of American writer Anne Rice and the cult hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The 21st century saw the wildly popular Twilight film and book series.
Citation Information
Article Title
“Dracula” goes on sale in London
Author
History.com Editors
Website Name
HISTORY
URL
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dracula-goes-on-sale-in-london
Access Date
May 26, 2020
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
May 21, 2020
Original Published Date
November 24, 2009BY HISTORY.COM EDITORS
This Day In History~
MAY 22
A thousand pioneers head West as part of the Great Emigration
The first major wagon train to the northwest departs from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.
Although U.S. sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not clearly established until 1846, American fur trappers and missionary groups had been living in the region for decades. Dozens of books and lectures proclaimed Oregon’s agricultural potential, tweaking the interest of American farmers. The first overland immigrants to Oregon, intending primarily to farm, came in 1841 when a small band of 70 pioneers left Independence, Missouri. They followed a route blazed by fur traders, which took them west along the Platte River through the Rocky Mountains via the easy South Pass in Wyoming and then northwest to the Columbia River. In the years to come, pioneers came to call the route the Oregon Trail.
In 1842, a slightly larger group of 100 pioneers made the 2,000-mile journey to Oregon. The next year, however, the number of emigrants skyrocketed to 1,000. The sudden increase was a product of severe depression in the Midwest combined with a flood of propaganda from fur traders, missionaries, and government officials extolling the virtues of the land. Farmers dissatisfied with their prospects in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, hoped to find better lives in the supposed paradise of Oregon.
READ MORE: 9 Things You May Not Know About the Oregon Trail
On this day in 1843, some 1,000 men, women, and children climbed aboard their wagons and steered their horses west out of the small town of Elm Grove, Missouri. The train comprised more than 100 wagons with a herd of 5,000 oxen and cattle trailing behind. Dr. Elijah White, a Presbyterian missionary who had made the trip the year before, served as guide.
The first section of the Oregon Trail ran through the relatively flat country of the Great Plains. Obstacles were few, though the river crossings could be dangerous for wagons. The danger of Indian attacks was a small but genuine risk. To be on the safe side, the pioneers drew their wagons into a circle at night to create a makeshift stockade. If they feared Indians might raid their livestock—the Plains tribes valued the horses, though generally ignored the oxen—they would drive the animals into the enclosure.
Although many neophyte pioneers believed Indians were their greatest threat, they quickly learned that they were more likely to be injured or killed by a host of more mundane causes. Obstacles included accidental discharge of firearms, falling off mules or horses, drowning in river crossings, and disease. After entering the mountains, the trail also became much more difficult, with steep ascents and descents over rocky terrain. The pioneers risked injury from overturned and runaway wagons.
Yet, as with the 1,000-person party that made the journey in 1843, the vast majority of pioneers on the trail survived to reach their destination in the fertile, well-watered land of western Oregon. The migration of 1844 was smaller than that of the previous season, but in 1845 it jumped to nearly 3,000. Thereafter, migration on the Oregon Trail was an annual event, although the practice of traveling in giant convoys of wagons gave way to many smaller bands of one or two-dozen wagons. The trail was heavily traveled until 1884, when the Union Pacific constructed a railway along the route.
READ MORE: Manifest Destiny
Citation Information
Article Title
A thousand pioneers head West as part of the Great Emigration
Author
Website Name
HISTORY
URL
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-thousand-pioneers-head-west-on-the-oregon-trail
Access Date
May 22, 2020
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
May 20, 2020
Original Published Date
November 16, 2009BY HISTORY.COM EDITORS
This Day In History!
The Nuclear Disaster at Three Mile Island
At 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry begins when a pressure valve in the Unit-2 reactor at Three Mile Island fails to close. Cooling water, contaminated with radiation, drained from the open valve into adjoining buildings, and the core began to dangerously overheat.
The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant was built in 1974 on a sandbar on Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River, just 10 miles downstream from the state capitol in Harrisburg. In 1978, a second state-of-the-art reactor began operating on Three Mile Island, which was lauded for generating affordable and reliable energy in a time of energy crises.
After the cooling water began to drain out of the broken pressure valve on the morning of March 28, 1979, emergency cooling pumps automatically went into operation. Left alone, these safety devices would have prevented the development of a larger crisis. However, human operators in the control room misread confusing and contradictory readings and shut off the emergency water system. The reactor was also shut down, but residual heat from the fission process was still being released. By early morning, the core had heated to over 4,000 degrees, just 1,000 degrees short of meltdown. In the meltdown scenario, the core melts, and deadly radiation drifts across the countryside, fatally sickening a potentially great number of people.
As the plant operators struggled to understand what had happened, the contaminated water was releasing radioactive gases throughout the plant. The radiation levels, though not immediately life-threatening, were dangerous, and the core cooked further as the contaminated water was contained and precautions were taken to protect the operators. Shortly after 8 a.m., word of the accident leaked to the outside world. The plant’s parent company, Metropolitan Edison, downplayed the crisis and claimed that no radiation had been detected off plant grounds, but the same day inspectors detected slightly increased levels of radiation nearby as a result of the contaminated water leak. Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh considered calling an evacuation.
Finally, at about 8 p.m., plant operators realized they needed to get water moving through the core again and restarted the pumps. The temperature began to drop, and pressure in the reactor was reduced. The reactor had come within less than an hour of a complete meltdown. More than half the core was destroyed or molten, but it had not broken its protective shell, and no radiation was escaping. The crisis was apparently over.
Two days later, however, on March 30, a bubble of highly flammable hydrogen gas was discovered within the reactor building. The bubble of gas was created two days before when exposed core materials reacted with super-heated steam. On March 28, some of this gas had exploded, releasing a small amount of radiation into the atmosphere. At that time, plant operators had not registered the explosion, which sounded like a ventilation door closing. After the radiation leak was discovered on March 30, residents were advised to stay indoors. Experts were uncertain if the hydrogen bubble would create further meltdown or possibly a giant explosion, and as a precaution, Governor Thornburgh advised: “pregnant women and pre-school age children to leave the area within a five-mile radius of the Three Mile Island facility until further notice.” This led to the panic the governor had hoped to avoid; within days, more than 100,000 people had fled surrounding towns.
On April 1, President Jimmy Carter arrived at Three Mile Island to inspect the plant. Carter, a trained nuclear engineer, had helped dismantle a damaged Canadian nuclear reactor while serving in the U.S. Navy. His visit achieved its aim of calming local residents and the nation. That afternoon, experts agreed that the hydrogen bubble was not in danger of exploding. Slowly, the hydrogen was bled from the system as the reactor cooled.
At the height of the crisis, plant workers were exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation, but no one outside Three Mile Island had their health adversely affected by the accident. Nonetheless, the incident greatly eroded the public’s faith in nuclear power. The unharmed Unit-1 reactor at Three Mile Island, which was shut down during the crisis, did not resume operation until 1985. Cleanup continued on Unit-2 until 1990, but it was too damaged to be rendered usable again. In the four decades since the accident at Three Mile Island, not a single new nuclear power plant has been ordered in the United States.
Citation Information
Article Title
Author
History.com Editors
URL
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nuclear-accident-at-three-mile-island
Access Date
March 28, 2020
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
March 25, 2020
Original Published Date
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Today In History
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
January 31
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
Truman announces development of H-bomb
U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.
Five months earlier, the United States had lost its nuclear supremacy when the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. Then, several weeks after that, British and U.S. intelligence came to the staggering conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top-ranking scientist in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union. These two events, and the fact that the Soviets now knew everything that the Americans did about how to build a hydrogen bomb, led Truman to approve massive funding for the superpower race to complete the world’s first “superbomb,” as he described it in his public announcement on January 31.
On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated “Mike,” the world’s first hydrogen bomb, on the Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear device, built upon the Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation implosion, instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a crater more than a mile wide. The incredible explosive force of Mike was also apparent from the sheer magnitude of its mushroom cloud–within 90 seconds the mushroom cloud climbed to 57,000 feet and entered the stratosphere. One minute later, it reached 108,000 feet, eventually stabilizing at a ceiling of 120,000 feet. Half an hour after the test, the mushroom stretched 60 miles across, with the base of the head joining the stem at 45,000 feet.
Three years later, on November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of the “hell bomb,” as it was known by many Americans, and the world lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.
Mws R Writings 