Yes it really happened

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1967 the Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones successfully appealed against a nine-month prison sentence for drug offences. He was ordered to pay a fine and placed on probation; in 1968 Tallulah Bankhead, an American stage and screen actress who starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944), died aged 66. At the end of a life noted for scandals and struggles with addiction, her final words were reportedly “codeine, bourbon”; in 1970 Jim Morrison performed his final show with the Doors, in New Orleans, walking off stage during a ragged version of Light My Fire. He died on July 3, 1971, aged 27; in 1988, 35 people died when three commuter trains carrying 1,300 people collided during rush hour in Clapham, south London. The cause of the accident was wiring errors in signals.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1642 the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first sighted New Zealand. The expedition was the first to encounter the Maori, the first settlers. Nieuw Zeeland was anglicised by Captain James Cook, who mapped the country in 1769-70; in 1892 the Victoria Building in Liverpool was completed, the main building for University College, Liverpool. Edgar Allison Peers, one of the university’s lecturers, coined the term in his 1943 book Redbrick University to describe civic universities founded in the 19th century; in 1958 a six-hour sea search by Nasa for a squirrel monkey named Gordo was called off after technical issues at the end of a 1,500-mile space rocket flight; in 1974 Malta was declared a republic within the Commonwealth. On March 31, 1979 the last British forces withdrew from the country, which had been under British administration since 1800; in 2003 US forces captured Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, near his home town of Tikrit. Convicted of crimes against humanity, he was executed on December 30, 2006.


Nature notes

Is that a tomato skin lying discarded on the path? No, it’s a half-eaten rosehip. A large patch of dog roses grows near by. Glinting like Rudolph’s nose, and dangling temptingly from bines that nod in the breeze, rosehips are an alluring sight for hungry birds. But they’re a large, awkwardly shaped fruit, and only blackbirds, mistle thrushes, fieldfares and waxwings can gobble them down easily. The rosehip on the path had been a bank vole’s meal: the mammal’s tooth marks were clearly visible in the fruit’s pulpy flesh. To access rosehips, voles either climb up the long, arcing bine for themselves, or wait for the fruit to be dropped by foraging birds. Jonathan Tulloch

Jonathan Tullo

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1918 Countess Constance Markievicz became the first woman elected to the House of Commons (the count was delayed until December 28). She won a Dublin constituency, but as a member of Sinn Fein did not take her seat in the Westminster parliament. In 1919 she became the first Irish female cabinet minister, in the newly-formed Dail Eireann (Irish parliament). She died on July 15, 1927, aged 59; in 1939 the League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union after its attack on Finland during the Second World War. The Times described the Finnish people as “fighting with the heroic loyalty characteristic of a free people when its liberty is at stake”; in 1946 the UN General Assembly voted to establish the UN headquarters in New York City. The first meeting of the assembly had taken place on January 10, 1946 in London; in 1950 the UN refugee agency UNHCR was created with a three-year mandate to address the post-Second World War refugee situation in Europe.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

The 1951 Grey Cup was played before a crowd of 27,341 at Varsity Stadium. It was a rather ho-hum affair with the Ottawa Rough Riders downing the Saskatchewan Roughriders, 21-14. The Western 'Riders made it close with two late touchdowns. One of the unusual aspects of the game is that they ran out of footballs. The officials had to ask the fans to return one of them that had been kicked into the stands so the game could continue.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

Today
In 1893 Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 in E Minor, From the New World, received its world premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York City; in 1929 the R100 rigid airship, designed by Briton Barnes Wallis, had its maiden flight. In the summer of 1930 it made a return flight to Montreal; in 1944 the Battle of the Bulge began in the Ardennes, with Germany achieving a short-lived “bulge” in primarily US-held lines. Winston Churchill said the battle was “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war”; in 1949 the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 became law. Seven National Parks were established within a decade, starting with the Peak District in 1951; in 1953 President Eisenhower held the first White House on-the-record press conference, attended by 161 reporters. The first filming took place on January 19, 1955.

Tomorrow

In 1538 individual Henry VIII, self-declared “supreme head of the Church of England”, was excommunicated by Pope Paul III; in 1663 Nzinga Mbandi, queen of the African kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba (present-day Angola) who fought against the Portuguese over control of the slave trade, died aged 82. Reputedly, she kept a harem of male concubines that were dressed in women’s clothes, had all-female bodyguards and took part in the cannibalistic rituals of the Imbangalans. She is regarded as a heroine in Angola, where a statue was erected in her honour in 2002; in 1770 Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised in his birthplace of Bonn, Germany. The composer and pianist lived in Vienna from 1792, where he died on March 26, 1827, aged 56; in 1903 the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine took place at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville and Wilbur Wright made four brief flights in their Wright Flyer.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

The 1952 Grey Cup was the first to be televised and it featured the Toronto Argonauts defeating the Edmonton Eskimos, 21-11. The China Clipper, Normie Kwong, was the star for the Esks with two touchdowns. It was the final game for Toronto's Joe Krol, who was limited to punting. He had been Mr. Everything in Canadian football. He was an excellent passer and runner, caught the ball, played defence, drop-kicked, swift-kicked, was adept at onside kicks, and returned punts. Krol scored 30 points in his Grey Cup career, a record.

Here are three short videos from the game.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1849 John Adams Whipple made his first daguerreotype of the moon through a telescope. His March 1851 images were critically acclaimed at that year’s Great Exhibition in London; in 1879 Joseph Stalin was born. He came to power in the mid-1920s and ruled the Soviet Union until his death on March 5, 1953. An estimated 20 million people were killed by his regime; in 1912 the “discovery” of an early hominid’s skull was announced at the Geological Society (London). In 1953 Eoanthropus dawsoni (Piltdown man) was revealed to be up to 600 years old; in 1974 Teruo Nakamura, a holdout soldier for the Imperial Japanese Army since the end of the Second World War, was lured out of his solitary camp on an Indonesian island. He was the last-known such soldier to be discovered, having enlisted in 1943. His wife had remarried and his son was a family man. Nakamura died on June 15, 1979, aged 59. Of his existence he said: “Not to lose my life became my only goal, and that exhausted almost all of my time”; in 2000 the singer Kirsty MacColl died after being struck by a speedboat while on holiday in Mexico. She is best known for the Pogues’ 1987 Christmas classic Fairytale of New York.

Nature notes

The first record of a brown rat in this country dates from 1728, when it is thought they made it ashore from Russian ships by running along the mooring ropes. They quickly out-competed the black rats that had been common here, and which are now very rare. Living in highly territorial clans and colonies, they spend most of the year in open countryside but will attempt to move into buildings as the temperature falls. Brown rats are highly intelligent, impressively adaptable, numerous, stubborn, enterprising and (as adults) rather lacking in natural predators — just like we humans. Melissa Harrison

Melissa Harrison - the country she is referring to above, I think is England, not Scotland.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1154 Henry II was crowned at Westminster Abbey. On July 6, 1189 he died after a riding accident at Chinon, France; in 1871 Samuel Clemens (the author Mark Twain), was granted a patent for “an improvement in adjustable and detachable garment straps” (aka braces). He also patented a self-pasting scrapbook (1873) and a history trivia game (1885); in 1981 the eight crew of RNLI Penlee lifeboat Solomon Browne lost their lives off Cornwall while attempting to rescue a stricken coaster’s eight crew and passengers, who also died; in 2016, 12 people were killed and about 50 injured when a terrorist drove a lorry into a Christmas market in Berlin. The killer was shot dead by police in Milan after a five-day manhunt.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1799 the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved into Dove Cottage, Grasmere, Lake District, which he described as “the loveliest spot that man hath ever found”; in 1848 Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, was proclaimed president of the Second Republic in France. In 1870 he was deposed as emperor, and died in England in 1873; in 1917 Chequers became the official country residence of the prime minister after royal assent was given to the Chequers Estate Act 1917. The 10,000-acre Buckinghamshire estate was donated to the nation by Sir Arthur Lee (later 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham), with Lloyd George the first prime minister to use the property. Realising that future prime ministers would come from varied backgrounds, Lee said: “To none of these in the midst of their strenuous and responsible labours could the spirit and anodyne of Chequers do anything but good”; in 1995 Elizabeth II’s request to Prince Charles and Princess Diana that they seek “an early divorce” was made public by Buckingham Palace, a month after the princess’s Panorama interview.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1848 Ellen and William Craft, an African-American couple, fled slavery in Georgia and used various ruses to reach the underground abolitionist network in Philadelphia. On arriving in England, “free from every slavish fear”, they raised five children. They returned to the US in 1868. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860) is their account of life as fugitives; in 1937 Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature film, premiered in Los Angeles, California. The film had taken three years to produce; in 1958 General Charles de Gaulle was elected president of France. On January 8, 1959 he took office as the first leader of the Fifth Republic, and resigned on April 28, 1969; in 1988 a bomb exploded on board New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103. The Boeing 747 crashed on the Scottish border town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1939 Ma Rainey, Mother of the Blues, died, aged 53. Noted for her “moaning” style of singing, her songs include Bo-Weavil Blues and Moonshine Blues. The 2020 film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom centres on a 1927 recording session, but also deals with racism and her bisexuality; in 1972, 14 survivors from an aircraft that crashed at 12,000ft in the Argentine Andes on October 13 were rescued, after two other passengers made a two-day trek for help. There were 29 fatalities, and parts of their bodies were eaten in the struggle to survive; in 1989 the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin reopened, having been closed since 1961. Helmut Kohl, the West German chancellor, met Hans Modrow, the East German prime minister; in 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu, the communist dictator of Romania since 1965, fled protesters in Bucharest. He and his wife, Elena, were executed by firing squad on December 25.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Before the 1953 Grey Cup game, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers played Balmy Beach and beat the O.R.F.U. representatives, 24-4. Then it was onto to Varsity Stadium to play the Hamilton Tiger-Cats before 27,313 fans. Hamilton went on to win 12-6 despite the passing of Winnipeg's quarterback, Indian Jack Jacobs, who completed 28 of 46 passes for 326 yards . The final play of the game saw Lou Kusserow of the 'Cats break up a Winnipeg pass that if completed could have tied up the game. Kusserow hit the receiver just as the ball arrived and it fell to the ground. Also, it was the first game I had seen on TV.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

Today

In 1688, during the Glorious Revolution, the Catholic James II was “allowed” to flee to France, and was replaced by Mary, his Protestant daughter, and William of Orange, her Dutch husband; in 1787 HMS Bounty, commanded by Captain William Bligh, sailed from Spithead, Portsmouth harbour, for the South Seas. On April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian and part of the crew mutinied; in 1888, according to Paul Gauguin, an argument in Arles, south of France, led to Vincent van Gogh cutting off a piece of his own ear and then taking it to a brothel madam as a “souvenir”; in 1919 the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 was passed, which allowed women to enter many professions for the first time. The first female justice of the peace was sworn in on December 31.

Tomorrow

In 1818 Franz Gruber, a church organist, composed the music for the poem Stille Nacht (Silent Night) by Josef Mohr, a curate. The English translation first appeared in 1863; in 1828 the trial began of William Burke who, with William Hare, provided corpses for anatomists. Burke was convicted and ordered to hang, his body used for medical science; Hare had turned individual’s Evidence; in 1871 Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida had its premiere in Egypt to mark the completion of the Suez Canal. The composer had reluctantly accepted its commission from the viceroy of Egypt; in 1904 the 2,939-seat London Coliseum, the largest theatre in the West End, opened with a variety bill. It was one of the first theatres to have electric lighting, and is now home to the English National Opera.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1831 Charles Darwin, aged 22, set sail on HMS Beagle from Devonport for South America. In addition to coastal surveying, the expedition gave the naturalist access to exotic flora and fauna; in 1904 the first performance of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan took place at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London. Nina Boucicault, who played Peter, “burst into tears” at the audience’s enthusiastic response to an appeal to clap “if you believe in fairies”. In 1911 the play was adapted into the novel Peter and Wendy; in 1923 Japan’s Prince Regent, Hirohito, survived an assassination attempt, the first of three known attempts. Hirohito reigned as emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989; in 1934 the name of Persia was changed to Iran, the historical name of the country; in 1979 Soviet soldiers staged a coup in Kabul, Afghanistan, assassinating President Hafizullah Amin and replacing him with Babrak Karmal. The Soviet Union withdrew on February 15, 1989.

on this day 25 December

William the Conqueror was crowned individual in 1066 on Christmas Day

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1065 the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster (Westminster Abbey) was consecrated. individual Henry III decided to rebuild the church, which was consecrated on October 13, 1269; in 1612 Galileo Galilei, while recording the positions of Jupiter’s moons, made his first sketch of a “star” that turned out to be the planet Neptune (confirmed in 1846); in 1879 the low-cost Tay Bridge in Scotland collapsed as a train crossed it during a severe storm, killing all of the 75 passengers and three crew. The present bridge was opened in 1887.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1808 Andrew Johnson, the 17th US president (1865-69), was born in a log cabin to barely literate parents. His fortunes changed in 1827 when he married Eliza McCardle, who taught him to read and write and invest his money wisely. After freeing his personal slaves in 1863, who remained with him as paid servants, he called slavery a “cancer upon the body politic”; in 1937 the Irish Free State was renamed Éire (Ireland) when the new constitution for “a sovereign, independent, democratic state” came into effect; in 1951 the first hybrid transistor hearing aid, the Sonotone 1010, went on sale in America; in 1952 it was announced that a coelacanth, a type of fish once known only from fossils, had been caught in the Mozambique Channel. It was the second of its species to be identified by scientists in modern times, the first being in 1938; in 1986 the Conservative politician Harold Macmillan died, aged 92. He was prime minister from 1957 to 1963 and the last to receive a hereditary peerage when he was created Earl of Stockton in 1984.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In AD69 Aulus Vitellius was hailed as Roman emperor by his legions in Germany. His reign began on April 16 and he was brutally murdered on December 22. He was the third of four emperors that year; in 1769 the Royal Academy met for the first time, with Sir Joshua Reynolds appointed president. The official title of the institution is the Royal Academy in London for the Purpose of Cultivating and Improving the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture; in 1807 the Slave Trade Abolition Bill was presented for its first reading to the House of Lords by Lord Grenville, the prime minister. The bill received royal assent on March 25, 1807; in 1946 individual Zog of Albania formally abdicated, having been ousted by Benito Mussolini in 1939. The People’s Socialist Republic of Albania was declared on January 11, 1946; in 1962 the first episode of the police drama Z Cars was broadcast, and quickly achieved viewing figures of 14 million. The show ran until 1978. Cast members included Brian Blessed as PC Smith.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

On November 27, 1954, the Edmonton Eskimos played the Montreal Alouettes for the Grey Cup before 27,321 fans at Varsity Stadium in Toronto. It was a great game and one I remember well as I watched the classic on TV. A number of future Canadian Hall of Fame members played in this contest. Edmonton had the China Clipper, Normie Kwong, future Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta, the Ramblin' Freight from Mississippi State, Jackie Parker, All-American Johnny Bright from Drake, and All-American Bernie Faloney from Maryland who would later gain fame with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Montreal had Sam 'the Rifle' Etcheverry, and future New York Giant, Alex Webster.

However, prior to the Grey Cup Edmonton won the berth in the Dominion Championship by defeating the Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen, 38-6. This was the last time the O.R.F.U. contested for the right to play in the Grey Cup.

Montreal was the big statistical winner with 37 first downs to Edmonton's 25, and 698 yards on offence to the Esk's 567. However, Edmonton won the Cup, 26-25. The key play happened with Montreal up 25-20 and driving to the Edmonton 10 yard line. Then on the next play the Montreal runner fumbled and the ball bounced right into the hands of Jackie Parker. He raced 95 yards to the end zone for the winning touchdown. Parker was the star of the game and played well on offence too. Red O'Quinn was the top player for Montreal with 2 touchdowns scored, 13 passes caught for 316 yards.

You can see highlights from the game and hear from key participants here. The game was shown on U.S. TV.

[samster]

Thanks for the heads up. Cant be bothered with the video so, just for info, where does Jim Bowen fit in?

images.jpeg.jpg (6.5 KiB) Viewed 3146 times

[Laan Yaa Mo]

If you mean Jim Bowen the comic, he might get a mention when the anniversary of his death if it is mentioned in The Times.