This day in history...

OK, that's funny.

 

On September 29, 1907, the cornerstone is laid for the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Washington DC, later designated the National Cathedral. Construction was not declared complete until 1990, though the Cathedral remains under constant reconstruction on cosmetic changes. With 7,700 feet of interior space it is the second largest church in the U.S. (Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC). It has been the location for 9 presidential funerals or memorial services, and every president since Reagan (except Clinton) celebrated a prayer service there on the morning of their inaugurations. Notable Americans interred in the Cathedral include President and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Admiral Thomas Dewey and Cordell Hull, Secretary of State at the outbreak of WWII. The Cathedral is Neo-Gothic in architecture and the worship department is rooted in the doctrine of the Episcopal Church.


On September 29, 1988, space shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-26. The mission marks the return of the space shuttle fleet to service after a 975-day grounding in the wake of the Challenger disaster. During the 4-day mission, the crew of Discovery deployed a satellite, conducted 11 onboard experiments and practiced unstowing and deploying a new crew escape system. Two notable facts about the 5-man crew of STS-26. It is the first mission since Apollo11 in which every crew member was a veteran of one or more previous space flights. And the pilot, Richard Covey, was serving as CAPCOM during the Challenger launch, and is the voice heard saying, "Challenger, go at throttle up" seconds before the fatal explosion.


On September 29, 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, President of Haiti, is deposed in a coup d'etat initiated by the nation's military. Aristide, a populist Roman Catholic priest, had been elected just 8 months earlier, and quickly began to enforce existing constitutional limits against the military, which had been the strong arm of the Duvalier family dictatorship over the Haitian people. In a coup d'etat that took less than 48 hours and killed or wounded more than 200, Aristide was removed from office, with General Raoul Cedras taking charge of the country. Diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and other nations led to Aristide (below) being released from captivity and exiled to France, where he remained until a U.N. initiative led by President Bill Clinton removed Cedras and reinstalled Aristide in 1994.

 

On September 30, 1962, two people are killed in a riot on the University of Mississippi campus over African American James Meredith's enrollment. A former serviceman in the U.S. Air Force, Meredith applied and was first accepted to Ole Miss, but his admission was revoked when the registrar learned of his race. Backed by a federal court order, Meredith tried to register on September 20, but was blocked from the admissions office personally by Governor Ross Barnett. On the 28th, the governor was found guilty of civil contempt and was ordered to cease his interference with desegregation of the university or face arrest. Two days later, Meredith was escorted onto the Ole Miss campus by U.S. Marshals. Turned back by violence, he returned the next day and began classes. Meredith, who was a transfer student from the all-Black Jackson State College, graduated with a degree in political science in 1963.


On September 30, 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's two-act opera The Magic Flute premiers in Vienna. Written around a German libretto (text) by Emanuel Schikaneder, the opera is well-received. Mozart will have little time to personally enjoy his final work's success, dying just two months later of unknown causes at age 35.


On September 30, 1947, the World Series makes its television debut. In Game 1 of the series, the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-3. There were fewer than 50,000 television sets in existence at the time, mostly on the east coast and in public venues like bars and restaurants, so there was no way to tabulate viewership of the game.

 

On October 20, 1973, the Sydney Opera House in Australia is formally dedicated after 15 years in construction. Considered one of the premiere architectural achievements of the 20th century, the Opera House was designed by Dutch architect Jorn Utzon. The 4.4 square acre facility was built at a cost of $102 million Australian (equivalent to about $950 million today), and is the home theatre of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia, The Australian Ballet, and Sydney Theatre Company. There are six different performing venues, ranging in capacity from 200 in the Utzon Room, to the 2,700 seat concert hall (below). The Sydney Opera House was designated a UNESCO heritage site in 2007. The opening, which features a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, is attended by Queen Elizabeth II but not Utzon; he had resigned from the project in 1966 over disagreements with the Australian government. As a result, Utzon was not personally recognized by Australia for his achievement until the parties reconciled in the 1990's.


On October 20, 1976, the MV George Prince, a passenger/vehicle ferry servicing the Luling and Destrehan communities on the Mississippi River just north of New Orleans, collides with a Dutch freighter. Seventy-eight passengers and crew were killed in the deadliest inland waterway disaster in the US since 1934. Nineteen passengers were rescued. The collision occurred just before dawn but in excellent visibility, and the Coast Guard investigation would find ferry pilot Egidio Auletta completely at fault. The collision occurred within site of the under-construction Luling-Destrehan bridge, which opened in 1983, making ferry service between the communities obsolete.


On October 20, 1951, Heisman Trophy candidate Johnny Bright leads the Drake Bulldogs into Stillwater, Oklahoma to take on Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University). Bright had become the first African-American to play in a game at A&M two years earlier, without incident. But this year it was well reported in both local and campus media that the Aggies would be targeting the star quarterback. Bright would be knocked out of the game three times in the first 7 minutes, each time on blows by A&M defensive lineman Wilbanks Smith. Newspaper photographer Don Robinson caught one of the cheap shots in a sequence of photos that earned him a Pulitzer Prize. Despite the evidence, university president Oliver Wilham denied any wrongdoing by his team, and when the Missouri Valley Conference also turned a blind eye, Drake withdrew from the conference, returning in 1971. Bradley University also withdrew in a show of solidarity and never returned. Bright went on to a 12-year career in the CFL. Smith denied any racial intent in his actions, and in a 2012 interview expressed happiness that he "had helped to integrate college football." The "Johnny Bright incident" was instrumental in the NCAA's mandating helmets with facemasks in 1955.

 

Wow, timing is everything in life.

 

On October 20, 1520, Ferdinand Magellan's expedition enters the passage that will eventually bear his name. The expedition had probed the east South American coast for several months looking for a suspected shortcut to the Pacific Ocean. After putting ashore for the winter (seasons reversed in the southern hemisphere) for several months, the search had resumed just 3 days earlier. Magellan named the passage Estrecho de Todos los Santos ("Strait of All Saints"). Spanish emperor Charles V, who sponsored the expedition, would later rename it the Strait of Magellan. The passage will remain among the most important seaways of the world until the construction of the Panama Canal, as it allows mariners the shortest passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans without having to test the stormy waters around Cape Horn at South America's southern tip.


On October 20, 1797, the USS Constitution is launched. A 3-masted, 44-gun heavy frigate, she is the third of six ships authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794. She would serve with distinction during the Barbary Coast War and in the War of 1812, earning the nickname "Old Ironsides" during her battle with the HMS Guerriere. She circumnavigated the globe in the 1840's, served as a Naval Academy training ship during the Civil War, and was finally decommissioned in 1881. Several attempts to preserve her failed, and she was slated to be used for naval target practice in 1905 when a nationwide public outcry sparked Congress to authorize funds for her restoration. The Constitution was re-entered on US Navy rolls as a commissioned vessel in 1931. Preserved as a museum ship in Boston, she remains the oldest commissioned warship afloat, and the world's oldest vessel still capable of sailing under her own power, which she last did on her 200th birthday in 1997 (below).


On October 21, 1983, the General Conference on Weights and Measures redefines the length of a meter. The Metric System dates back to the 1790's, when the French Academy of Sciences determined to create a worldwide standard scale for all measures. At that time, a meter (or metre, from the ancient Greek "metreo" meaning "to measure, count or compare") was defined as one ten millionth of the quarter meridian, the distance from the Equator to the North Pole along the meridian through Paris. The General Conference (CGPM) was established in 1875 and meets roughly every four years in Paris. The 17th CGPM, meeting in 1983, redefined the length of a meter as "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second". Don't ask me why this was necessary; I can't find an explanation. The CGPM has met 26 times and has redefined some aspect of international measurement in some fashion each time. It is next scheduled to meet in 2022 and will no doubt fuck with what we think we know again.

 

As good a reason as any. But I'm sure the difference between old and new is so infinitesimally small that only a quantum physicist would care.

 

On October 22, 1879, Thomas Edison successfully tests his incandescent lamp. The first experiment with incandescence - producing light by electrically heating a filament in vacuum until it glows - had been performed in the early 1760's. Numerous inventors had tried to produce incandescent light bulbs in the years that followed, using filaments of a variety of materials; most migrated to carbon filaments. Edison beat them all by producing a better vacuum bulb. His 10/22/79 bulb burned for 13 and a half hours before failing. Today's standard household light bulbs typically have a life span of about 1,000 hours.


On October 22, 1707, four warships of the British Royal Navy run aground off Sicily, with the loss of an estimated 2,000 lives. While severe weather played a part in the Sicilian Naval Disaster, numerous human errors were present as well, all centered around the inability of the ships' navigators to accurately fix their position. Parliament would respond to the disaster by passing Longitude Act 1714, which offered a series of prizes to anyone who could devise a simple and practical method to determine a ship's position at sea.


October 22, 1844 brings the Great Disappointment to the Millerite movement. William Miller (below) was a New York farmer and Baptist preacher who became convinced in the early 1830's that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was imminent. His preaching and writings earned him an impressive following throughout the U.S. and Canada. Through his study of the Bible, with special attention to the Books of Daniel and Revelation, Miller began predicting actual dates that Jesus would return, finally settling on Oct. 22. Jesus apparently did not get the memo, leaving Millerites across North America disillusioned. Some, however, maintained their faith, organizing into what has become the modern Seventh Day Adventist Church.