This day in history - November 14, 1957: The Apalachin Meeting is raided by law enforcement

By Richard K. Barry

For reasons I can't begin to explain, I went through a period in which I was fascinated by organized crime. Not in the sense of seeing any glory in it, but rather in being utterly amazed that this low life criminal activity could be treated with such respect in movies and other aspects of popular culture.

Maybe the Godfather movies are to blame, but scenes of Mafia boss John Gotti returning to his neighbourhood to cheering crowds after having been acquitted in one court proceeding or another was always enough to make me weep. Perhaps there will always be a subset of the population who lionize those who appear to get away with beating the system. It's beyond me.

The Apalachin meeting was a gathering of approximately 100 Mafia bosses from the U.S., Italy and Canada, who got together in November of 1957 to, in essence, peacefully divvy up criminal activity in various regions.

Unfortunately for the attendees, the number of fancy cars and out-of-area license plates parked near the home of the host (above), in Apalachin, New York, near Binghamton, made the authorities suspicious.

They raided the gathering, which sent a bunch of guys in dark shoes and very expensive suits running through the mud and woods to get away.

According to some theories, the police really had no idea what they were raiding, but they suspected that, whatever it was, it was bad news.

At the end of the day, 58 underworld bosses were detained and indicted.

One of the most significant consequences of the raid was that it helped to prove the existence of the Mafia to some, like J. Edgar Hoover, who refused to acknowledge its existence.

Always loved the image of these guys slipping and sliding through the muck as they attempted to escape justice.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - November 3, 1913: The United States introduces an income tax

By Richard K. Barry

The 16th Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture of the U.S. tax system. The amendment gave Congress legal authority to tax income and resulted in a revenue law that taxed incomes of both individuals and corporations.

On November 3, 1913, the first American citizens received information about the new national income tax including the fact that a married man living with his wife, who is in receipt of an income of $5,000 pays $10 a year and if his income is $10,000 he pays $60 a year.

Not much to say about this. I'm surprised Republicans don't have plans to wear black arm bands on Capitol Hill. Maybe they do.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - October 31, 2002: Enron's CFO is indicted in Houston, Texas

By Richard K. Barry

On this day in 2002, Andrew Fastow, former Enron Corp. chief financial officer, is indicted by a federal grand jury in Houston on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice related to the collapse of his former employer.

As the Wikipedia entry states:

Enron's nontransparent financial statements did not clearly depict its operations and finances with shareholders and analysts. In addition, its complex business model and unethical practices required that the company use accounting limitations to misrepresent and modify the balance sheets and portray a favourable depiciton of its performace. According to McLean and Elkid in the book The Smartest Guys in the Room, "The Enron scandal grew out of a steady accumulation of habits and values and actions that began years before and finally spiraled out of control."

Enron was the largest bankruptcy reorganization in American history. At the end of the day, shareholders lost nearly $11 billion.

How is it that we did not see the subprime mortgage crisis coming?

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - October 27, 1904: The first underground New York City Subway line opens

By Richard K. Barry

The New York City Subway is one of the oldest and most extensive public transportation systems in the world, with 468 stations in operation and 209 miles of routes. In 2010, the subway delivered 1.604 billion rides.

It is the fourth-busiest rapid transit rail system in the world in annual ridership, after Tokyo's, Moscow's, and Seoul's rapid transit systems, and the busiest in the Western Hemisphere.

Just thought you might like to know.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - September 26, 1981: Nolan Ryan pitches his fifth no-hitter

By Richard K. Barry

On this day in 1981, Nolan Ryan pitched his fifth no-hitter, which set a record at the time. He would go on to throw two more before he was done. This one, in 1981, was for the Houston Astros. He had four for the California Angels (two in '73, one in '74 and another in '75); and two for the Texas Rangers ('90 and '91). To put things in perspective, Ryan's seven is three more than any other major league pitcher.

The Major League Baseball playoff season will soon be upon us. It is a glorious time of year. I know a lot of people who don't really follow baseball but they get very interested in the game as the weather starts to get cooler. It just feels right, like a time to hunker down with friends to maybe think about the passage of yet another season - literally and metaphorically.

The American League Division Series begins on September 30th and for the National League it's October 1st.

It's been a long time since my Toronto Blues Jays were in the post-season, but I remember sitting at a bar downtown with a friend, a friend we recently lost to cancer, as Joe Carter hit that ball just over the left field fence to beat Philadelphia in 1993 for Toronto's second series win in a row. And all hell broke loose.

Then we hit the street to party all night. It was a good time.

Yes, watching baseball when there is chill in the air feels just fine.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - August 18, 1920: The 19th Amendment is ratified giving women the vote

By Richard K. Barry

It really is quite incredible to contemplate the fact that women have only been able to vote in the United States since 1920. Specifically, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited United States citizens from being denied the right to vote based on sex.

Up to that point, most states, having the right to determine qualifications for voting, disenfranchised women.

Thanks in large part to the women's suffrage movement, and women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women got the vote.

My parents were born in the 1920s. It was simply not that long ago. Positive change does come, just never fast enough.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - August 15, 1969: The Woodstock Music and Arts Festival opens

By Richard K. Barry

I've been to Woodstock. Actually, it was about five or six years after "the" Woodstock happened and I was just killing time with a friend on a bit of a day trip. I grew up probably about an hour and a half from where the festival was staged and thought it might be nice to see where it all happened. 



As you can imagine, by the mid-'70s there wasn't much to see. Nice area, though. 

But, between August 15-18, 1969, in the town of Bethel, New York in Sullivan County, about 43 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock, an event billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music" took place at Max Yagur's dairy farm. 

On these three days, 32 acts performed for around 500,000 people, when only between 150,000 and 200,000 were expected. 

Acts included: Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar, Tim Hardin, Melanie, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald, John Sebastian, Santana, Canned Heat, The Grateful Dead, Credence Clearwater Revival, Janice Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Joe Cocker, Ten Years After, The Band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Johnny Winter, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and Jimi Hendrix. 



Pretty good lineup. 

The closest I got to Woodstock that weekend was when my father mentioned that he had been on the New York State Thruway and that a whole slew of beat up cars and vans were clogging up the road heading south (probably on August 18th) and they were completely full of mud. 



(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - August 2, 1943: Lt. John F. Kennedy's PT-109 is rammed by a Japanese destroyer

By Richard K. Barry

Working with a lot of younger people as I do, I no longer take it for granted that they will have a working knowledge of the historical events that I consider important. It would have been impossible to have grown up in the '60s, for example, without knowing the story of President John F. Kennedy's exploits as a young naval officer in the Pacific during WWII. They even made a movie about it, not to mention the book, both of which came out in 1963.

The short of it is that Kennedy commanded a small patrol boat that was rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. Although there were a couple of fatalities, the remaining crew managed to reach an island and were later rescued. Kennedy's leadership in helping to secure the crews' rescue was no doubt helpful in defining him in a way helpful to his political career.

If you are of a certain age, you knew all of that.

Interesting to note that Kennedy's exploits were more or less accepted at face value, though many decades later John Kerry's military record and reputation were all but destroyed by lies and innuendo. Makes you wonder what has changed.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 31, 1981: A 42-day Major League Baseball strike ends

By Richard K. Barry

Now that the football lockout is over, I was just thinking about other memorable labor issues, past and present, in professional sports.

In fact, the 1981 baseball strike was the fifth work stoppage in Major League Baseball (MLB) since the 1972 baseball strike. The 1981 strike forced the cancellation of 713 games, which accounted for 38 percent of the MLB schedule.

And who could forget the 1994-95 baseball strike, which was the eighth stoppage in MLB history. This one was a 232-day strike, which lasted from August 12, 1994 to April 2, 1995, and led to the cancellation of between 931 and 948 games, including the entire 1994 postseason and World Series.

I was going to list all strikes and lockouts for MLB, the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL), but I counted 17 and just don't have the patience. If you're interested, you can find the info here.

And if you follow round ball you know that the NBA is currently in a lockout situation, which is now going into Day 28, and guess what else? The Collective Bargaining Agreements for MLB and the NHL expire on Dec. 11, 2011 and Sept. 15, 2012, respectively.

As I have said elsewhere, I don't begrudge players fighting for better deals, but, as a fan, I hate to see the games get damaged.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 28, 1932: President Hoover orders troops to evict the "Bonus Army"

By Richard K. Barry

The Bonus Army was what they called the 43,000 marchers, comprised of 17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and other groups, who came to Washington, D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand immediate cash payment of their service certificates.

The march took place at a time when many of the veterans had already been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression a few years earlier. In essence, they were asking that compensation due to them for wartime service that was not redeemable until 1945 be paid immediately.

Rather than being met by the compassion one might expect for soldiers who had served their country, they were driven out, along with their wives and children, by infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks with none other than Douglas MacArthur in command.

Today the right-wing likes to warn that progressives are encouraging "class warfare" by pointing to the growing gap between rich and poor and the diminishing opportunities for the middle class and the poor to sustain themselves.

I would suggest that progressives are not so much encouraging mass protest as they are amazed that it is taking so long to come together. When growing numbers are having a difficult time taking care of their families through no fault of their own, they are likely to move beyond asking politely for their fair share. It's not a call to class warfare. It's a statement of fact.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 25, 1956: The ocean liner Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm

By Richard K. Barry

On this day in 1956, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria collided with the MS Stockholm in heavy fog, killing 46. The collision took place 45 miles south of Nantucket Island. The next day, the Andrea Doria sunk.

The incident was heavily covered by the media at the time. It is generally recognized that the design of the ship, which allowed it to stay afloat for 11 hours after impact, good behavior of the crew, improvements in communications, and the quick response of other ships averted a disaster on the scale of the Titanic in 1912.

The Andrea Doria was the last major transatlantic passenger vessel to sink before air travel became the preferred method of crossing the ocean.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 21, 1925: High school teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution

By Richard K. Barry

In Dayton, Tennessee on this date a high school teacher was found guilty of teaching evolution. Yes, John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching science. (That's Darwin to the left, by the way, not Scopes).

So, where do the current crop of declared and potential GOP presidential hopefuls stand on teaching science in our schools?

Michele Bachmann has said that evolution is a theory that has never been proven one way or the other and that schools should teach intelligent design as an alternate explanation for the origins of life.

Tim Pawlenty thinks that creationism should be taught alongside evolution, which is Sarah Palin's view.

Rick Perry supports teaching creationism in Texas public schools.

Rick Santorum is a creationist, obviously.

To his credit, Newt Gingrich seems to have a more nuanced view (hell, let's give him credit for something).

Mitt Romney, also to his credit, once said that while he "believed that God designed the universe and created the universe," he also believed that "evolution is most likely the process he used to create human beings."

Even those who want to support science see the need to equivocate in order to keep a large segment of the conservative base happy.

All in all, things really haven't changed that much.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 20, 1969: Apollo 11 lands on the moon

By Richard K. Barry

The first ever human-crewed landing on the moon, in the Sea of Tranquility, took place on this day. Almost seven hours later (on July 21st), Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.

Along with Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, they made up the three-person crew of Apollo 11.

Even today, I can easily remember those names without having to think much about it, such is the importance of the occasion in my memory.

As my co-blogger Carl pointed out yesterday, the manned space program, at least for now, will effectively end when the current Shuttle mission is complete. I agree wholeheartedly that it is a tragedy that the program will not go on for many of the reasons he cites.

I remember well growing up with the space program and how as a young student I was motivated to be more interested in learning because of it. While my education eventually took me away from the sciences and in the direction of the humanities, I remember thinking as a young person that a good education might be useful if I wanted to do interesting things in life. I recall the exploits of the early NASA astronauts helping to form that perception.

Again, without having to think much about it, I can recite the names Shepard, Glenn, Slayton, Schirra, Carpenter, Borman, Lovell, Cernan, and especially White, Chaffee and Grissom, the crew of the ill-fated Apollo 1 mission, along with those from Apollo 11 and on and on.

It seems to have had an impact on me.

It might also be good to remember how important shared national goals can be in bringing a nation together, though the concept is hard to imagine in the current climate.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 16, 1941: Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game

By Richard K. Barry

Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak still stands and it's hard to imagine that it will ever be broken, though I guess one should never say anything like that.

The streak began on May 15th and ended on July 17th, but on July 16th he got that 56th hit. He had a .408 batting average during the streak, going 91 for 223, with 15 home runs and 55 RBIs.

Here we are just after the All-Star break, moving into the middle of July, the dog days of summer. It's a perfect time to remember the Yankee Clipper's phenomenal feat and how truly incredible it was.

(Yes, yes, let's do that, it was truly, utterly amazing what he did, even if he had a bit of help along the way, but that shouldn't detract from our loathing of the damn Yankees generally. I was at the game last night, a 7-1 drubbing at the hands of the Blue Jays, and it was, as always, a genuine pleasure to see them go down. -- MJWS)

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 15, 1979: Jimmy Carter does not use the word "malaise" in a speech

By Richard K. Barry

In one of the more interesting examples of an important political speech that did not contain the word most associated with it, President Jimmy Carter, on this day in 1979, gave his so-called "Crisis of Confidence" speech, which is more commonly known as the "malaise" speech, though that word is never used.

In the speech, Carter spoke of "this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation," which apparently suggested malaise to a lot of people.

A year and a half later Ronald Reagan was president. The moral of the story would appear to be: don't ever get all philosophical with the American people, and for god's sake don't try to tell them the truth about themselves. That's never a good idea.

Better to tell them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear, if your goal is to win elections.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 12, 1962: The Rolling Stones perform their first ever concert, at the Marquee Club in London

By Richard K. Barry

A short while ago, I posted a reference to the date on which Paul McCartney and John Lennon met. It seems only fair to give the Stones their due. Maybe it's because I'm working my way through Keith Richard's bio that I'm thinking of the group.

Reading Richard's book, one is reminded how important the blues tradition was to The Rolling Stones and how completely immersed in it they were before they became one of the most notable Rock 'n' Roll bands of all time.

Here's a clip from 1966 of the boys doing "Paint It Black."

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 11, 1804: Former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton is mortally wounded in a duel

By Richard K. Barry

The duel in question was between Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr. It took place on July 11, 1804, and Hamilton, having been shot in the lower abdomen above the right hip, died the next day.

The cause of the duel was, of course, some sort of affront to Burr's honor, which required that he receive what I think they called in the day "satisfaction." All in all, it ended badly for Hamilton.

I thought the item interesting this week in particular because Hamilton was the first United States Secretary of the Treasury.

I note that he was involved in 1790 in writing something called the First Report on the Public Credit, which analyzed the financial standing of the United States of America and made recommendations for the retirement of the national debt.

Hmmm. What advice would Hamilton offer our national leaders today on the debt ceiling as one who worked so hard to ensure that the debt and honor of his fledging country would be secured following the American Revolution and the debt incurred to conduct it?

I'll bet Glenn Beck could tell me.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 8, 1889: The first issue of The Wall Street Journal is published

By Richard K. Barry

The Wall Street Journal is the largest newspaper in the United States by circulation and, sadly, since 2007 owned by the Rupert Murdoch news empire, which also owns the Fox News Channel among many other media entities.

In a week in which another Murdoch-owned media outlet, the British tabloid News of the World, announced that it will shut down due to despicable invasions of privacy, it seems important to remind ourselves what a cancer on the world of journalism Murdoch has been.

Despite earlier assurances from him that he would not turn the Journal into a right-wing advocacy rag, that is exactly what he has done.

And Fox News is just another "objective news source." Yeah, right.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - July 6, 1957: John Lennon and Paul McCartney first meet

By Richard K. Barry

John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles (as if you didn't know) were introduced on this day in 1957 when Lennon's band, The Quarrymen, performed at the St. Peter's Church Hall fete in Woolten.

Some might argue that this hardly qualifies as a momentous historical occasion. I would argue that they are wrong. I prefer to live in a world where The Beatles once existed and their music is still frequently heard. Yes, I feel pretty strongly about that.

And I will also admit that I posted this for the immensely cool picture.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

This day in history - June 28, 1894: Labor Day becomes an official US holiday

By Richard K. Barry

So, to which governor should I send a copy of Pete Seeger's Carry It On! The Story of Working People in America in Song and Picture? Should it be Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey or Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin? It is difficult to decide.

To which champion of working men and women everywhere should I make such a gift? I'm sure they would both cherish it.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)