July
*Chinese Communists joined forces to attack Hankow.
July 3
*Glen Gorbous, a Canadian baseball player who set a world record for the longest throw of a baseball, was born in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada.
Glen Edward Gorbous (b. July 8, 1930, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada - June 12, 1990, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) set a world record for longest throw of a baseball, 135.89m (445 feet, 10 inches) on August 1, 1957, while he was playing for the Omaha Cardinals of the American Association. In an exhibition he was given a six-step running start and threw the ball 445 feet and ten inches from the far right field corner of the stadium to the far left hand corner.
Oddly, Gorbous' world record was set only after his brief major league baseball career had already ended. Gorbous played outfield for the Cincinnati Redlegs, in early 1955, and the Philadelphia Phillies, from mid-1955 to May, 1957.
*****
July 4
*The dedication of George Washington's sculpted head was held at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
*Alaa El-Din Hassanin El-Hamouly (Arabic: علاء الدين حسنين الحامولي) (b. July 4, 1930, Cairo, Egypt – d. January 13, 1984), an Egyptian footballer (soccer player) who played as a forward for Zamalek, was born in Cairo, Egypt. El-Hamouly also played for the Egyptian national team. He was part of the squad that won the 1957 Africa Cup of Nations, and represented his country in the 1952 and 1960 Summer Olympics.
July 5
*The Seventh Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops opened. This conference approved the use of birth control in limited circumstances, a move away from the Christian views on contraception expressed by the Sixth Conference a decade earlier
July 7
*The Lapua Movement marched in Helsinki, Finland.
*The building of the Boulder Dam (later known as the Hoover Dam) was started on the Colorado River in the United States.
July 8
*Glen Gorbous, a Canadian baseball player who established the world record for longest throw of a baseball, was born in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada (July 8).
Glen Edward Gorbous (b. July 8, 1930, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada - d. June 12, 1990, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) established the current world record for longest throw of a baseball, 135.89m (445 feet, 10 inches). The feat took place on August 1, 1957, while he was playing for the Omaha Cardinals of the American Association. In an exhibition, he was given a six-step running start and threw the ball 445 feet and ten inches from the far right field corner of the stadium to the far left hand corner.
Oddly, Gorbous' world record was set only after his brief major league baseball career had already ended. Gorbous played outfield for the Cincinnati Reds, in early 1955, and the Philadelphia Phillies, from mid-1955 to May, 1957.
July 10
*Pete Carril, an American basketball coach best known for his time as head coach of Princeton University for thirty yeas and for his use of the Princeton offense, was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Peter Joseph Carril was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the son of Spanish immigrants of Asturias to the United States. He was a graduate of Liberty High School in Bethlehem, where he was an all-state selection for Pennsylvania in the 1947–48 season. He played collegiate basketball at Lafayette College under Butch Van Breda Kolff. While at Lafayette College he became a member of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity. Following graduation from college in 1952, Carril served in the United States Army. The Korean War was winding down when Carril was ordered to Korea. After the war, Carril served as a public information officer after the war. In 1954, Carril became junior varsity basketball coach and ninth grade Pennsylvania history teacher at Easton High School in Easton, Pennsylvania. In 1958, Carril became varsity coach at Reading High School, where Gary Walters, the future Princeton Athletic Director, and former Princeton point guard, played basketball under him in high school.
After a year at Lehigh University, Carril moved to Princeton University. In 29 years, he compiled a 514–261 (.663 winning percentage) record. He is also the only coach to win 500 games without the benefit of athletic scholarships for his players. He won or shared 13 Ivy League championships and received 11 NCAA berths and 2 NIT bids. The Tigers won the NIT championship in 1975. Carril was noted for a tenacious defense, as his teams were first in the nation in scoring defense for fourteen of his final 21 seasons, including eight in a row, from 1988–1996. Although he only won three NCAA Tournament games at Princeton, his Tigers were known as a very dangerous early-round NCAA opponent.
In 1989, Princeton took first-ranked Georgetown down to the wire before losing, 50–49. Had the Tigers won, they would have been the first #16 seed to defeat a #1 seed since the NCAA began seeding the tournament field in 1979. Seven years later, Carril's final collegiate victory was an upset of defending national champions UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament in 1996 by a score of 43–41, in what is considered one of the greatest upsets of all time.
The most lasting element of his college coaching legacy is likely to be the increasingly popular Princeton offense, a low-possession offensive system consisting of frequent ball reversal, movement without the ball and back-door cuts which he developed. John Thompson III, a former assistant to Carril, adopted the Princeton offense at Georgetown and coached the Hoyas to the 2007 Final Four.
Carril was an assistant coach for the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association for 10 years until his retirement in 2006. When Rick Adelman became Sacramento's head coach before the 1998–1999 season, Carril helped Adelman install the Princeton offense and oversaw the Kings' development into one of the NBA's best, most talented, and most potent offensive teams. With the help of such stars as Vlade Divac, Chris Webber, Peja Stojakovic, Doug Christie, and Mike Bibby, from 2001 to 2006, Carril showed that the Princeton offense could function in the NBA. In 2007, he volunteered as a coach to the Washington Wizards. He rejoined the Kings as an assistant for the 2009 season.
His career collegiate coaching record, including one season at Lehigh, was 525–273. He was enshrined in both the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997, following his retirement from Princeton.
Carril married to Dolores L. ("Dilly") Halteman. They had a daughter, Lisa, and a son, Peter.
July 11
*Australian cricketer Donald Bradman scored a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England.
*****
*Shirley Griffiths, a Barbadian cricketer who played first class cricket in 27 matches for Warwickshire between 1956 and 1958, was born in Christ Church, Barbados.
Shirley Spencer Griffiths (b. July 11, 1930 - d. 2015)
was a right-handed tail-end batsman and a right-arm fast bowler. After a few games in 1956, he played in about a third of Warwickshire's matches in 1957 and a similar number in 1958, but faced a lot of competition for a fast bowling place from Jack Bannister, Roly Thompson and Ray Carter. His best performances came in 1958, the best of all being seven Kent wickets for 62 runs at Edgbaston in mid-June. In early July, he took five for 37 as Middlesex were dismissed for just 77, but in a soggy summer this did not produce a victory. However, when the Cambridge University bowler Ossie Wheatley was available later in the same month, it was Griffiths who made way for him and he was unable to regain his place. Griffiths was not re-engaged for the 1959 season and did not play first-class cricket again.
July 13
*The first FIFA World Cup started. Lucien Laurent scored the first goal, for France against Mexico.
July 14
*Maurice Bessinger, an American restaurateur and politician noted for his defense of racial segregation, was born in Orangeburg County, South Carolina (July 14).
Lloyd Maurice Bessinger, Sr. (b. July 14, 1930, Orangeburg County, South Carolina – d. February 22, 2014) served in Army on the front lines of the Korean War, returning to the United States in 1952.
Bessinger, along with his brother Joe Jr., opened their first drive-in restaurant, Maurice's Piggie Park, in West Columbia, South Carolina, in 1953. By 1968, he had four drive-ins, and by 2002 the chain had grown to nine restaurants. The barbecue was well-regarded, and Piggie Park was included in multiple compilations of the best barbecue in the United States.
Bessinger also sold BBQ sauce under the Carolina Gold brand whose recipe included mustard, brown sugar, soy sauce, and vinegar. By 1999, this had become the largest BBQ operation in the United States.
Piggie Park restaurants were segregated, such that African-Americans were not allowed to eat inside the restaurants, until a lawsuit, Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc. won an injunction in 1968.
In 1964, Anne Newman, the wife of an African-American minister, sued Piggie Park after Bessinger refused her entry to his restaurant. Newman sued under Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and won an injunction against the chain requiring them to stop refusing service to African-Americans. At the Supreme Court, this case also set a precedent assigning attorney's fees to someone who successfully sues for an injunction under the Act.
In 2000, the state of South Carolina stopped flying the Confederate Flag over the capitol, following a vote earlier that year. In response, Bessinger raised Confederate flags over his restaurants, also calling the flags "a real Christian symbol... fighting tyranny and terror and suppressive government."
A number of grocery chains responded by dropping his Carolina Gold sauce from their shelves. The Council of Conservative Citizens and the South Carolina Heritage Coalition responded with a call to boycott Wal-Mart, and Bessinger filed a lawsuit against Bi-Lo, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, Sam's Club, Wal-Mart, and Winn-Dixie, arguing that their refusal to carry his products violated South Carolina's Unfair Trading Practices Act and intruded onto his right to free speech. Bessinger asked for $50 million in damages. The South Carolina Supreme Court rejected his claims in 2007.
After Bessinger's children took over the operation, they took down the flags, the last of them in 2013.
Bessinger was a Baptist, and argued in Newman that requiring that he serve African-American customers was a violation of his religious beliefs.
Bessinger believed that "God gave slaves to whites", and claimed that South Carolina had had a gentler "Biblical slavery".
Bessinger also notably opposed flying flags at half-mast following the death of Martin Luther King, saying King had only been in Memphis "to stir hatred, violence, and discord."
Bessinger ran for a seat in the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1964, narrowly losing by a margin of around 100 votes. A 1974 run for governor was far less successful, drawing only 2.5% of the vote in the Democratic primary.
Behind the scenes, in 1964, Bessinger was Chairman of the George Wallace presidential campaign.
In the 1970s, he was also the chairman of the South Carolina Independent Party.
In 2001, Bessinger published his autobiography, Defending My Heritage.
July 19
*Georges Simenon's detective character Inspector Jules Maigret made his first appearance in print under Simenon's own name when the novel Pietr-le-Letton (known in English as The Strange Case of Peter the Lett) began serialization in a French weekly magazine. Simenon would eventually write 75 novels (as well as 28 short stories) featuring the pipe-smoking Paris detective.
July 20
*Chuck Daly, an American basketball head coach who led the Detroit Pistons to consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) Championships in 1989 and 1990 and who coached the United States men's Olympic basketball team ("The Dream Team") to the gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics, was born in Kane, Pennsylvania.
Charles Jerome "Chuck" Daly (b. July 20, 1930, Kane, Pennsylvania – d. May 9, 2009, Jupiter, Florida) is a two-time Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, being inducted in 1994 for his individual coaching career, and in 2010 was posthumously inducted as the head coach of the "Dream Team", the United States Olympic basketball team which won the gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics. The Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award is named after him
Born in Kane, Pennsylvania, to Earl and Geraldine Daly on July 20, 1930. Daly attended Kame Area High School. He matriculated at St. Bonaventure University for one year before transferring to Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1952. After serving two years in the military, he began his basketball coaching career in 1955 at Punxsutawney Area High School in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
After compiling a 111–70 record in eight seasons at Punxsutawney High School, Daly moved on to the college level in 1963 as an assistant coach under Vic Bubas at Duke University. During his six seasons at Duke, the Blue Devils won the Atlantic Coast Conference championship and advanced to the Final Four, both in 1964 and 1966. Daly then replaced Bob Cousy as head coach at Boston College in 1969. The Eagles recorded an 11–13 record in Daly's first year at the school, and improved to 15–11 in 1971.
Daly became the head coach at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971, succeeding Dick Harter. Penn won twenty or more games and captured the Ivy League title in each of its first four seasons with Daly at the helm. The most successful campaign was his first in 1972, when the Quakers recorded a 25–3 record overall (13–1 in their conference), and advanced to the NCAA East Regional Final, eventually losing to North Carolina. An additional significant success for Daly was in 1979, when all five starters on Pennsylvania's Final Four team had initially been recruited by Daly. His overall record after six seasons at Penn was 125–38 (74–10 within the Ivy League).
In 1978, Daly joined the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers as an assistant coach. During the 1981 season, the Cleveland Cavaliers hired him as the third head coach that season, but was fired with a 9-32 record before the season ended. He then returned to the 76ers as a broadcaster until he was hired in 1983 by the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons, a club that had never recorded back-to-back winning seasons before Daly's tenure, made the NBA playoffs each year he was head coach (1983–1992), as well as reaching the NBA finals three times, winning two consecutive NBA championships in 1989 and 1990. While serving as the Pistons coach, Daly was also a color commentator for TBS's NBA Playoff coverage.
Daly was named head coach of the United States Dream Team that won the gold medal at the 1992 Olympics, before moving his NBA career onto the New Jersey Nets for the 1992-93 NBA season. Daly stayed with the Nets for two seasons, before his first retirement.
Daly again took up a role as color commentator for TNT's NBA coverage during the mid-1990s before coming out of retirement to coach the Orlando Magic at the beginning of the 1997-98 season. Daly stayed two seasons with the Magic and then retired permanently.
Daly was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2009 and died on May 9, 2009, at the age of 78.
July 21
*The United States Department of Veterans Affairs was established.
July 22
*Jerry Grundhoefer, the owner of Grundy's Jazz Music Hall in Birmingham, Alabama, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota (July 22).
Jerry Grundhoefer (a.k.a. Grundy) (b. July 22, 1930, St. Paul, Minnesota – d. June 10, 1997) was a jazz musician who played clarinet, piano, saxophone, organ, xylophone, and flute in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1980, Grundhoefer was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
Raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Grundhoefer graduated from Cretin High School, (now Cretin-Derham Hall High School).
Grundhoefer’s first public performances were playing organ at St. Paschal Catholic Church where he met Bernie Fitch, his future wife. Fitch and Grundhoefer were married at St. Croix River in 1950. Subsequently, he worked for American Dereck machines. Approximately one year later, Grundhoefer was working as a salesman for Hobart Sales and Services, playing music on the side.
Due to job transfers, the family moved from St. Paul to Atlanta to Raleigh, North Carolina, while Grundhoefer opened offices for Hobart in those cities. The family finally settled permanently in Birmingham, Alabama in 1965. By this time, they had 9 children and Bernie was expecting another. They had 2 more children together after the move.
Grundhoefer opened Grundy’s Jazz Music Hall in 1979 in Birmingham, a bar where jazz musicians played live music daily. Grundy’s later changed locations in 1980 to a larger venue with a tapas restaurant with the bar in order to expand for bigger musical acts. Among those musicians who performed at Grundy’s were Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, Johnny O'Neal, Royce Campbell, Clark Terry, Ray Reach and many others. Grundy’s closed in 1992.
After the closing of Grundy's, Grundhoefer continued to play in other Birmingham venues including Marty’s Bar and Grill.
In 1992, Grundhoefer was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He received a second diagnosis in 1993 of multiple myeloma. He died on June 10, 1997.
July 24
*Alfred Balk, an American reporter who wrote groundbreaking articles about housing segregation, the Nation of Islam, the environment and Illinois politics, was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa (July 24).
The refusal of Alfred Balk (b. July 24, 1930, Oskaloosa, Iowa – d. November 25, 2010, Huntley, Illinois) to identify a confidential source led to a landmark court case. During a career-long emphasis on media improvement, he served on the Twentieth Century Fund's task force that established a National News Council, consulted for several foundations, served as secretary of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller's Committee on the Employment of Minority Groups in the News Media, and produced a film, That the People Shall Know: The Challenge of Journalism, narrated by Walter Cronkite. He wrote and co-authored books on a variety of topics, ranging from the tax exempt status of religious organizations to globalization to the history of radio.
Alfred William Balk was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, on July 24, 1930, the son of Leslie William Balk and Clara Buell Balk. He grew up in Muscatine, Iowa and Rock Island, Illinois. He began his journalistic career writing for his high school paper, and also landed a job as a sports reporter for the local paper, The Rock Island Argus.
After high school, he enrolled at Augustana College in Rock Island and transferred to Northwestern University after a year where he graduated from the Medill School of Journalism with both bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism (1952 and 1953, respectively). He later served in the United States Army as a journalist and was stationed in Japan during 1954-1955. He began freelance writing for various magazines while in Japan, and also wrote for a variety of military newspapers during his service.
In 1958, after serving as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, he began freelancing full-time.
During eight years of full-time freelancing his most influential articles appeared in the era’s leading magazines, including Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest and others. Balk was a member of the Society of Magazine Writers, which elected him president in 1969.
While working at the weekly Saturday Evening Post, which for a time retained him under contract as a lead writer, he wrote on subjects such as Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, victims of the fallout-shelter craze, how a television jackpot almost ruined the winners, and defections among Protestant ministers. He co-authored a report on the rise of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam with Alex Haley of future Roots fame. The pioneering article, "Black Merchants of Hate," later led to Haley's classic and bestseller The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Balk rose to prominence in 1962 after writing an article for the Saturday Evening Post titled “Confession of a Block-Buster” which chronicled a Chicago real estate speculator’s strategy of frightening white homeowners into selling their property at a loss and then re-selling to black buyers at inflated prices. The article made legal history when a group of black homeowners subsequently tried to compel disclosure of his confidential source, pseudonymous speculator ("Norris Vitchek"). In Baker v. F&F Investment, a U.S. District Court upheld his right to confidentiality, and in 1972 the United States Supreme Court declined to review the decision, and the press pronounced the case a landmark.
Among other prominent articles, for The Reader’s Digest he reported on nursing-home neglect, threats to public parkland, Great Lakes water problems, boating-boom safety hazards, and Thomas Edison remembered by a son; for The Reporter, the social significance of Ebony magazine founder John Johnson's success; and for The New York Times Magazine, the “Dust Bowl” revisited.
For Harper’s, his subjects included zoning abuses, a builder who made integration pay, and two high-profile cover stories. One, a collaboration with then-State Senator Paul Simon on “The Illinois Legislature: A Study in Corruption” (September 1964), spurred ethics reforms and vaulted Simon to national prominence, a United States Senate seat, and a legacy including helping foster President-to-be Barack Obama's political rise. The other, “God Is Rich” (October 1967), on religious organizations’ tax exemptions, led to the book The Religion Business (John Knox Press) and, under a Foundation fellowship, a nationwide study The Free List: Property Without Taxes (Russell Sage Foundation), which Time, in a two-page report (May 3, 1971), described as “a penetrating new book.”
Balk moved to New York in 1966 as features editor and editor at large of Saturday Review under Norman Cousins. Three years later, he became editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and also taught at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.
Balk left Columbia in 1973 to serve as founding editor of World Press Review, a monthly foreign press digest, hiring Marion K. Sanders of Harper's and other distinguished journalists to build a successful publication, which was later acquired by The Stanley Foundation. His last magazine position, from 1989 to 1991, was as managing editor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' publication, IEEE Spectrum. He also was an Executive Committee member of the American Society of Magazine Editors, Overseas Press Club, as well as a consultant to the Twentieth Century Fund, the Ford Foundation and the Markle Foundation. In the mid-1970s, he delivered media commentaries on CBS Morning News. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, his writing on media appeared in Nieman Reports, Columbia Journalism Review, Editor and Publisher, Folio, and other journalism organs.
In 1991, Balk moved to Syracuse in upstate New York to teach journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. There he wrote his eighth book, The Rise of Radio: From Marconi Through the Golden Age (McFarland, 2006) which received positive reviews from other media professionals, including Mike Wallace of CBS.
All told, during his lifetime, Balk wrote more than 100 magazine articles and eight books.
Balk married Phyllis Munter, of Moline, Illinois, in 1953. They met while in high school representing rival schools on a local radio program. His wife served as an important support throughout her husband's career, as indicated in Balk's scholarly papers in the collections of the Newberry Library in Chicago and Syracuse University. She was also known in her own right for extensive volunteer and charitable work.
Balk died of colon cancer on November 25, 2010, in his home in Huntley, Illinois. He was survived by his wife, two daughters and two grandchildren. His wife, Phyllis, died on May 4, 2011.
*****
July 25
*Laurence Olivier married actress Jill Esmond.
July 26
*Charles Creighton and James Hargis of Missouri began their return journey to Los Angeles using only a reverse gear; the 11,555 kilometer (7180 mile) trip lasted 42 days.
July 28
*R. B. Bennett defeated William Lyon Mackenzie King in federal elections and became the Prime Minister of Canada.
July 29
*The British airship R100 set out for a successful 78-hour passage to Canada.
July 30
*Uruguay beat Argentina 4–2 to win the first Association football (soccer) FIFA World Cup final.
*New York station W2XBS was put in charge of NBC broadcast engineers.
July 31
*The radio drama The Shadow aired for the first time in the United States.
*****
*Raul "Tinajon" Feliciano Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican professional basketball player and lawyer, was born.
Raúl "Tinajón" Feliciano Rodríguez (b. July 31, 1930, Ciales, Puerto Rico – d. July 17, 2016, San Juan, Puerto Rico) played basketball professionally in Puerto Rico, where his scoring ability began a media coverage not seen before in the Baloncesto Superior Nacional (a first tier level professional men's basketball league in Puerto Rico) and prompted a new record assistance of 114,468 fans, an unheard number at the time. Feliciano died on July 17, 2016, at his home in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He finished his career with 4,719 points in the Baloncesto Superior Nacional. He was also the first Puerto Rican basketball player to receive offers from National Basketball Association teams such as the Baltimore Bullets and the New York Knicks.
August
August 6
*Judge Joseph Force Crater disappeared.
August 7
*R. B. Bennett took office as the eleventh Prime Minister of Canada.
*Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were lynched in Marion, Indiana. There were hanged. James Cameron survived. This would be the last recorded lynching of African Americans in the Northern United States.
August 9
*Betty Boop premiered in the animated film Dizzy Dishes.
August 12
*Turkish and Russian forces launched an offensive against Kurdish rebels.
*Horace Smith-Dorrien, one of the few British survivors of the Battle of Isandlwana, died at Chippenham, Wiltshire, England.
Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien (b. May 26, 1858 – d. August 12, 1930) held senior commands in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) during the First World War. He commanded II Corps at the Battle of Mons, the first major action fought by the BEF, and the Battle of Le Cateau, where he fought a vigorous and successful defensive action contrary to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief Sir John French, with whom he had had a personality clash dating back some years. In the spring of 1915, he commanded the Second Army at the Second Battle of Ypres. He was relieved of command by French for requesting permission to retreat from the Ypres Salient to a more defensible position.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was born at Haresfoot, a house near Berkhamsted, to Colonel Robert Algernon Smith-Dorrien and Mary Ann Drever. He was the twelfth child of sixteen. His eldest brother was Thomas Algernon Smith-Dorrien-Smith, the Lord Proprietor of the Isles of Scilly from 1872 to 1918. He was educated at Harrow, and on February 26, 1876 entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He had hoped to join the 95th Rifle Brigade of Peninsular War fame. After passing out he was commissioned in 1877 as a subaltern to the 95th (Derbyshire) Regiment of Foot, later to become the Sherwood Foresters.
On November 1, 1878, he was posted to South Africa where he worked as a transport officer. In this role he encountered, and fought against, corruption in the army.
Smith-Dorrien was present at the Battle of Isandlwana during the Zulu Wars on January 22, 1879, serving with the British invasion force as a transport officer for the army's Royal Artillery detachment. As Zulu forces overran the British forces, Smith-Dorrien narrowly escaped on his transport pony over 20 miles of rough terrain with twenty Zulu warriors in hot pursuit, crossing the Buffalo River, 80 yards wide and with a strong current, by holding the tail of a loose horse. Smith-Dorrien was one of fewer than fifty British survivors of the battle (many more native African troops on the British side also survived), and one of only five Imperial officers to escape the Zulu bloodbath. Because of his conduct in trying to help other soldiers escape from the battlefield, including a colonial commisariat officer named Hamer whose life he saved, he was recommended for a Victoria Cross, but, as the recommendation did not go through the proper channels, he never received it. Nevertheless, Smith-Dorrien continued to take part in the rest of that war. Indeed, his observations on the difficulty of opening ammunition boxes led to changes in British practice for the rest of the war, though modern commentators argue that this was not as important a factor in the defeat as was thought at the time.
***
The Battle of Isandlwana (alternative spelling: Isandhlwana) on January 22, 1879 was the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. Eleven days after the British commenced their invasion of Zululand in South Africa, a Zulu force of some 20,000 warriors attacked a portion of the British main column consisting of about 1,800 British, colonial and native troops and perhaps 400 civilians. The Zulus were equipped mainly with the traditional assegai iron spears and cow-hide shields, but also had a number of muskets and old rifles, though they were not formally trained in their use. The British and colonial troops were armed with the state-of-the-art Martini-Henry breech-loading rifle and two 7-pounder (3-inch, 76mm) mountain guns deployed as field guns, as well as a Hale rocket battery. Despite a vast disadvantage in weapons technology, the numerically superior Zulus ultimately overwhelmed the poorly led and badly deployed British, killing over 1,300 troops, including all those out on the forward firing line. The Zulu army suffered around a thousand killed.
The battle was a decisive victory for the Zulus and caused the defeat of the first British invasion of Zululand. The British Army had suffered its worst defeat against an indigenous foe with vastly inferior military technology. Isandlwana resulted in the British taking a much more aggressive approach in the Anglo–Zulu War, leading to a heavily reinforced second invasion and the destruction of King Cetshwayo's hopes of a negotiated peace.
***
After South Africa, Smith-Dorrien served in Egypt under Evelyn Wood. He was promoted captain on April 1, 1882, appointed assistant chief of police in Alexandria on August 22, 1882, then given command of Mounted Infantry in Egypt on September 3, 1882. He was then seconded to the Egyptian army (February 1, 1884). During this time, he forged a lifelong friendship with the then Major (later Lord) Herbert Kitchener. He met Charles Gordon more than once, but his bad knee kept him off the expedition to relieve Khartoum. However, he did serve on the Suakin Expedition. On December 30, 1885, he witnessed the Battle of Gennis, where the British Army fought in red coats for the last time. The next day (December 31, 1885), Smith-Dorrien was given his first independent command, 150 men (a mixture of hussars, mounted infantry and Egyptians) with fifty infantry in reserve. His task was to capture nine Arab river supply boats (nuggars), which, in order to achieve, he had to exceed his orders by going beyond the village of Surda, making a 60-mile journey on horseback in 24 hours. For this, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1886.
Smith-Dorrien then left active command to go to the Staff College, Camberley (1887–9). At the time, Staff College was not much respected, and Smith-Dorrien, instead of studying, devoted much of his time to sport whilst there.
Smith-Dorrien was posted to India, and promoted to major on May 1, 1892. He became Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General, Bengal, on April 1, 1893 and then Assistant Adjutant General, Bengal, on October 27, 1894. He returned to his regiment where he commanded troops during the Tirah Campaign of 1897–98.
In 1898, he transferred back to Egypt. He was promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel on May 20, 1898 and appointed Commanding Officer of the 13th Sudanese Battalion (July 16, 1898). He fought at the Battle of Omdurman (September 2, 1898), where his infantry fired at Devishes from entrenched positions. He commanded the British troops during the Fashoda Incident. He was then promoted to brevet colonel 16 November 16, 1898 and Commanding Officer of the Sherwood Foresters and substantive lieutenant-colonel (January 1, 1899).
***
At the Battle of Omdurman (September 2, 1898), an army commanded by the British General Sir Herbert Kitchener defeated the army of Abdullah al-Taashi, the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, Kitchener was seeking revenge for the 1885 death of General Charles Gordon. It was a demonstration of the superiority of a highly disciplined army equipped with modern rifles, machine guns, and artillery over a force twice their size armed with older weapons, and marked the success of British efforts to re-conquer the Sudan. However, it was not until the 1899 Battle of Umm Diwaykarat that the final Mahdist forces were defeated.
The village of Omdurman was chosen in 1884 as the base of operations by the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. After the Mahdi's death in 1885, following the successful siege of Khartoum, his successor (Khalifa) Abdullah retained it as his capital.
***
On October 31, 1899, he shipped to South Africa for the Second Boer War, arriving at Durban December 13, 1899, in the middle of "Black Week".
***
In a disastrous week, dubbed Black Week, from December 10-17, 1899, the British Army suffered three devastating defeats at the hands of the Boer Republics at the battles of Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, with a total of 2,776 men killed, wounded and captured. The events were an eye opener for the government and troops, who had thought that the war could be won very easily.
British units were armed with then-modern magazine-fed small arms, the .303 caliber Lee Enfield and Lee Metford, and breech-loading field artillery. Boers were armed with the 7mm 1893 Mauser rifle, and fielded German-built breech-loading field artillery. The British, however, were accustomed to fighting tribal wars with tactics more suited to the Napoleonic era, and had no tactical doctrine in place to fight against a foe also armed with the same modern weapons. The British suffered accordingly.
With new, modernized troops came new tactics. Only a few months after Black Week, one of the main cavalry divisions led a flanking march that ended with a victory. Besides equipping the cavalry with rapid-firing rifles instead of lances, the new British military doctrine also started using artillery as a defensive unit of the army, and saw innovation in the use of machine guns.
These new volunteers served as a "new face, untainted by defeat and accusations of defeatism…to breathe life back into the campaigns and restore hope at home." Other changes enacted by the British immediately following the Black Week disaster were the mobilization of two more divisions, the calling up of the army reserves, raising a force of mounted cavalry for better mobility, and most importantly by sending volunteers from home overseas which added more than one hundred thousand additional troops by the end of the war.
***
On February 2, 1900, Lord Roberts put Smith-Dorrien in command of the 19th Brigade and, on February 11, he was promoted to major general, making him one of youngest generals in the British Army at the time. He later commanded a division in South Africa.
Smith-Dorrien provided covering fire for French's Cavalry Division at Klipsdrift, and played an important role at the Battle of Paardeberg (February 18 to 27, 1900), where he was summoned by Lord Roberts and asked for his views in the presence of Lord Kitchener, French and Henry Colville. He argued for the use of sapping and fire support, rather than attacking the entrenched enemy over open ground. Kitchener followed him to his horse to remonstrate that he would be "a made man" if he attacked as Kitchener wished, to which he replied he had given his views and would only attack if ordered to do so. A week later he took the laager after careful assault.
At Sanna's Post (March 31, 1900), Smith-Dorrien ignored inept orders from Colville to leave wounded largely unprotected and managed an orderly retreat without further casualties. He took part in the Battle of Leliefontein (November 7, 1900). On February 6, 1901, Smith-Dorrien's troops were attacked in the Battle of Chrissiesmeer.
Smith-Dorrien's qualities as a commander meant he was one of the few British commanders to enhance his reputation during this war. Smith-Dorrien was mentioned three times in dispatches in the “London Gazette” (including by Lord Kitchener dated June 23, 1902). He was at the top of a list (September 21, 1901) of eighteen successful commanders of columns or groups of columns, including Haig and Allenby, whom French commended to Lord Roberts.
Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien (b. May 26, 1858 – d. August 12, 1930) held senior commands in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) during the First World War. He commanded II Corps at the Battle of Mons, the first major action fought by the BEF, and the Battle of Le Cateau, where he fought a vigorous and successful defensive action contrary to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief Sir John French, with whom he had had a personality clash dating back some years. In the spring of 1915, he commanded the Second Army at the Second Battle of Ypres. He was relieved of command by French for requesting permission to retreat from the Ypres Salient to a more defensible position.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was born at Haresfoot, a house near Berkhamsted, to Colonel Robert Algernon Smith-Dorrien and Mary Ann Drever. He was the twelfth child of sixteen. His eldest brother was Thomas Algernon Smith-Dorrien-Smith, the Lord Proprietor of the Isles of Scilly from 1872 to 1918. He was educated at Harrow, and on February 26, 1876 entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He had hoped to join the 95th Rifle Brigade of Peninsular War fame. After passing out he was commissioned in 1877 as a subaltern to the 95th (Derbyshire) Regiment of Foot, later to become the Sherwood Foresters.
On November 1, 1878, he was posted to South Africa where he worked as a transport officer. In this role he encountered, and fought against, corruption in the army.
Smith-Dorrien was present at the Battle of Isandlwana during the Zulu Wars on January 22, 1879, serving with the British invasion force as a transport officer for the army's Royal Artillery detachment. As Zulu forces overran the British forces, Smith-Dorrien narrowly escaped on his transport pony over 20 miles of rough terrain with twenty Zulu warriors in hot pursuit, crossing the Buffalo River, 80 yards wide and with a strong current, by holding the tail of a loose horse. Smith-Dorrien was one of fewer than fifty British survivors of the battle (many more native African troops on the British side also survived), and one of only five Imperial officers to escape the Zulu bloodbath. Because of his conduct in trying to help other soldiers escape from the battlefield, including a colonial commisariat officer named Hamer whose life he saved, he was recommended for a Victoria Cross, but, as the recommendation did not go through the proper channels, he never received it. Nevertheless, Smith-Dorrien continued to take part in the rest of that war. Indeed, his observations on the difficulty of opening ammunition boxes led to changes in British practice for the rest of the war, though modern commentators argue that this was not as important a factor in the defeat as was thought at the time.
***
The Battle of Isandlwana (alternative spelling: Isandhlwana) on January 22, 1879 was the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. Eleven days after the British commenced their invasion of Zululand in South Africa, a Zulu force of some 20,000 warriors attacked a portion of the British main column consisting of about 1,800 British, colonial and native troops and perhaps 400 civilians. The Zulus were equipped mainly with the traditional assegai iron spears and cow-hide shields, but also had a number of muskets and old rifles, though they were not formally trained in their use. The British and colonial troops were armed with the state-of-the-art Martini-Henry breech-loading rifle and two 7-pounder (3-inch, 76mm) mountain guns deployed as field guns, as well as a Hale rocket battery. Despite a vast disadvantage in weapons technology, the numerically superior Zulus ultimately overwhelmed the poorly led and badly deployed British, killing over 1,300 troops, including all those out on the forward firing line. The Zulu army suffered around a thousand killed.
The battle was a decisive victory for the Zulus and caused the defeat of the first British invasion of Zululand. The British Army had suffered its worst defeat against an indigenous foe with vastly inferior military technology. Isandlwana resulted in the British taking a much more aggressive approach in the Anglo–Zulu War, leading to a heavily reinforced second invasion and the destruction of King Cetshwayo's hopes of a negotiated peace.
***
After South Africa, Smith-Dorrien served in Egypt under Evelyn Wood. He was promoted captain on April 1, 1882, appointed assistant chief of police in Alexandria on August 22, 1882, then given command of Mounted Infantry in Egypt on September 3, 1882. He was then seconded to the Egyptian army (February 1, 1884). During this time, he forged a lifelong friendship with the then Major (later Lord) Herbert Kitchener. He met Charles Gordon more than once, but his bad knee kept him off the expedition to relieve Khartoum. However, he did serve on the Suakin Expedition. On December 30, 1885, he witnessed the Battle of Gennis, where the British Army fought in red coats for the last time. The next day (December 31, 1885), Smith-Dorrien was given his first independent command, 150 men (a mixture of hussars, mounted infantry and Egyptians) with fifty infantry in reserve. His task was to capture nine Arab river supply boats (nuggars), which, in order to achieve, he had to exceed his orders by going beyond the village of Surda, making a 60-mile journey on horseback in 24 hours. For this, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1886.
Smith-Dorrien then left active command to go to the Staff College, Camberley (1887–9). At the time, Staff College was not much respected, and Smith-Dorrien, instead of studying, devoted much of his time to sport whilst there.
Smith-Dorrien was posted to India, and promoted to major on May 1, 1892. He became Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General, Bengal, on April 1, 1893 and then Assistant Adjutant General, Bengal, on October 27, 1894. He returned to his regiment where he commanded troops during the Tirah Campaign of 1897–98.
In 1898, he transferred back to Egypt. He was promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel on May 20, 1898 and appointed Commanding Officer of the 13th Sudanese Battalion (July 16, 1898). He fought at the Battle of Omdurman (September 2, 1898), where his infantry fired at Devishes from entrenched positions. He commanded the British troops during the Fashoda Incident. He was then promoted to brevet colonel 16 November 16, 1898 and Commanding Officer of the Sherwood Foresters and substantive lieutenant-colonel (January 1, 1899).
***
At the Battle of Omdurman (September 2, 1898), an army commanded by the British General Sir Herbert Kitchener defeated the army of Abdullah al-Taashi, the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, Kitchener was seeking revenge for the 1885 death of General Charles Gordon. It was a demonstration of the superiority of a highly disciplined army equipped with modern rifles, machine guns, and artillery over a force twice their size armed with older weapons, and marked the success of British efforts to re-conquer the Sudan. However, it was not until the 1899 Battle of Umm Diwaykarat that the final Mahdist forces were defeated.
The village of Omdurman was chosen in 1884 as the base of operations by the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. After the Mahdi's death in 1885, following the successful siege of Khartoum, his successor (Khalifa) Abdullah retained it as his capital.
***
On October 31, 1899, he shipped to South Africa for the Second Boer War, arriving at Durban December 13, 1899, in the middle of "Black Week".
***
In a disastrous week, dubbed Black Week, from December 10-17, 1899, the British Army suffered three devastating defeats at the hands of the Boer Republics at the battles of Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, with a total of 2,776 men killed, wounded and captured. The events were an eye opener for the government and troops, who had thought that the war could be won very easily.
British units were armed with then-modern magazine-fed small arms, the .303 caliber Lee Enfield and Lee Metford, and breech-loading field artillery. Boers were armed with the 7mm 1893 Mauser rifle, and fielded German-built breech-loading field artillery. The British, however, were accustomed to fighting tribal wars with tactics more suited to the Napoleonic era, and had no tactical doctrine in place to fight against a foe also armed with the same modern weapons. The British suffered accordingly.
With new, modernized troops came new tactics. Only a few months after Black Week, one of the main cavalry divisions led a flanking march that ended with a victory. Besides equipping the cavalry with rapid-firing rifles instead of lances, the new British military doctrine also started using artillery as a defensive unit of the army, and saw innovation in the use of machine guns.
These new volunteers served as a "new face, untainted by defeat and accusations of defeatism…to breathe life back into the campaigns and restore hope at home." Other changes enacted by the British immediately following the Black Week disaster were the mobilization of two more divisions, the calling up of the army reserves, raising a force of mounted cavalry for better mobility, and most importantly by sending volunteers from home overseas which added more than one hundred thousand additional troops by the end of the war.
***
On February 2, 1900, Lord Roberts put Smith-Dorrien in command of the 19th Brigade and, on February 11, he was promoted to major general, making him one of youngest generals in the British Army at the time. He later commanded a division in South Africa.
Smith-Dorrien provided covering fire for French's Cavalry Division at Klipsdrift, and played an important role at the Battle of Paardeberg (February 18 to 27, 1900), where he was summoned by Lord Roberts and asked for his views in the presence of Lord Kitchener, French and Henry Colville. He argued for the use of sapping and fire support, rather than attacking the entrenched enemy over open ground. Kitchener followed him to his horse to remonstrate that he would be "a made man" if he attacked as Kitchener wished, to which he replied he had given his views and would only attack if ordered to do so. A week later he took the laager after careful assault.
At Sanna's Post (March 31, 1900), Smith-Dorrien ignored inept orders from Colville to leave wounded largely unprotected and managed an orderly retreat without further casualties. He took part in the Battle of Leliefontein (November 7, 1900). On February 6, 1901, Smith-Dorrien's troops were attacked in the Battle of Chrissiesmeer.
Smith-Dorrien's qualities as a commander meant he was one of the few British commanders to enhance his reputation during this war. Smith-Dorrien was mentioned three times in dispatches in the “London Gazette” (including by Lord Kitchener dated June 23, 1902). He was at the top of a list (September 21, 1901) of eighteen successful commanders of columns or groups of columns, including Haig and Allenby, whom French commended to Lord Roberts.
August 15
*Selma James, the co-author of the women's movement classic The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, was born in Brooklyn, New York (August 15).
Selma James (b. Selma Deitch; formerly Weinstein; August 15, 1930, Brooklyn, New York), is a co-author of the women's movement classic The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (with Mariarosa Dalla Costa), co-founder of the International Wages for Housework Campaign, and coordinator of the Global Women's Strike.
Selma Deitch was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1930. As a young woman, she worked in factories, and then as a full-time housewife and mother. At the age of 15, she joined the Johnson-Forest Tendency, one of whose three leaders was C. L. R. James.
In 1952, she wrote the classic A Woman’s Place, first published as a column in Correspondence, a bi-weekly newspaper written and edited by its readers with an audience of mainly working-class people. Unusually at the time, the newspaper had pages dedicated to giving women, young people and Black people an autonomous voice. She was a regular columnist and edited the Women's Page. In 1955, she came to England to marry C. L. R. James, who had been deported from the United States during the McCarthy period. They were together for 25 years, and were close political colleagues.
From 1958 to 1962, James lived in Trinidad, where, with her husband, she was active in the movement for West Indian independence and federation. Returning to Britain after independence, she became the first organizing secretary of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination in 1965, and a founding member of the Black Regional Action Movement and editor of its journal in 1969.
In 1972, the publication of The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (authored with Mariarosa Dalla Costa) launched the "domestic labour debate" by spelling out how housework and other caring work women do outside of the market produces the whole working class, thus the market economy, based on those workers, is built on women's unwaged work. The 1983 publication of James's Marx and Feminism broke with established Marxist theory by providing a reading of Marx's Capital from the point of view of women and of unwaged work.
In 1972, James founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign, which demands money from the State for the unwaged work in the home and in the community. A raging debate followed about whether caring full-time was "work" or a "role" — and whether it should be compensated with a wage. James was the first spokeswoman of the English Collective of Prostitutes, which campaigns for decriminalization as well as viable economic alternatives to prostitution.
Beginning in 1985, she co-ordinated the International Women Count Network, which won the United Nations decision where governments agreed to measure and value unwaged work in national statistics. Legislation on this has since been introduced in Trinidad & Tobago and Spain, and time-use surveys and other research are under way in many countries. In Venezuela, Article 88 of the Constitution recognizes work in the home as an economic activity that creates added value and produces wealth and social welfare, and entitles housewives to social security.
Since 2000, James has been international coordinator of the Global Women's Strike, a network of grassroots women, bringing together actions and initiatives in many countries. The strike demands that society "Invest in Caring Not Killing", and that military budgets be returned to the community starting with women, the main carers everywhere. She has been working with the Venezuelan Revolution since 2002.
She is a founder of the Crossroads Women's Centre in Kentish Town, London, and is general editor of Crossroads Books. She lectures in the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries on a wide range of topics, including "Sex, Race, & Class", "What the Marxists Never Told Us About Marx", "The Internationalist Jewish Tradition", "Rediscovering Nyerere's Tanzania", "CLR James as a political organizer", and "Jean Rhys: Jumping to Tia".
In April 2008, James (along with Edinburgh-based couple Ralph and Noreen Ibbott, both members of the Britain Tanzania Society in the 1960s), visited Edinburgh on the anniversary of Tanzania Muungano Day, which falls on April 26. She gave a talk in a session hosted by the Tanzania Edinburgh Community Association (TzECA) on Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa (African socialism) in the 1960s in Tanzania with reference to the subject of Ruvuma Development Association (RDA), and the Tanzania Arusha Declaration. RDA traces its roots to the original Ruvuma Development Association (RDA), which was registered in the early 1960s when, encouraged by Julius Nyerere the first President of Tanzania, following Independence a number of communal villages joined together and organized themselves into what became known as the Ujamaa villages. The driving force behind the Association was Ntimbanjayo Millinga, who was the secretary of the local branch of the Tanzanian African National Union Youth League, and he was supported by Ralph Ibbott, an English quantity surveyor who acted as an advisor and agreed to live and work with his family in the village of Litowa. The session took place at the "Waverley Care Solas" Abbey Mount.
James is a founder member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and, in April 2008, signed the Letter of British Jews on the 60th anniversary of Israel published on April 30, 2008 in The Guardian, explaining why they would not be celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary.
August 16
*The first British Empire Games opened in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Robert Martin Culp, an American actor, screenwriter, voice actor, and director, widely known for his work in television, was born in Oakland, California. Culp earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy (1965–1968), the espionage television series in which co-star Bill Cosby and he played secret agents.
Robert Martin Culp (b. August 16, 1930, Oakland, California — d. March 24, 2010, Los Angeles, California) starred as Bill Cosby's partner in a government secret agent team in the trailblazing espionage television drama I Spy (1965–68), the first program to feature a black actor (Cosby) in a leading role. The show’s premise cast Culp as agent Kelly Robinson and Cosby as his partner, Alexander Scott, who embarked on secret missions while traveling around the world disguised as, respectively, an international tennis player and his trainer. The actors often engaged in comic banter as they tried to brainstorm how to engineer their escape from imminent danger. Culp wrote the scripts for seven episodes, one of which he also directed and an episode earned him an Emmy nomination for writing. For all three years of the series, he was also nominated for an acting Emmy (Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Series category), but lost each time to Cosby.
Other Culp television credits include Trackdown (1957–59), in which Culp starred as a Texas Ranger, and The Greatest American Hero (1981–83), with Culp portraying an FBI agent. Though Culp’s big-screen credits were slim, but a few of his most memorable movies include Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), in which he played one of the sexually adventurous participants in a foursome; Hickey & Boggs (1972), in which he and Cosby were a team of seedy private detectives; and The Pelican Brief (1993), in which he was the president of the United States, In 1994, Culp and Cosby reunited in the television movie sequel I Spy Returns.
August 17
*Edward Hughes, an English poet and children's writer best known for beingthe husband of the American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963, was born in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, England.
Edward James Hughes, also known as Ted Hughes (b. August 17, 1930, Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, England – d. October 28, 1998, London, England), was an English poet and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Hughes was married to the American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. Some feminists and some American admirers of Plath blamed him for her death. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none addresses directly the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days before her death.
August 18
Edward James Hughes, also known as Ted Hughes (b. August 17, 1930, Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, England – d. October 28, 1998, London, England), was an English poet and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Hughes was married to the American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. Some feminists and some American admirers of Plath blamed him for her death. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none addresses directly the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days before her death.
August 18
August 18
*Gene Bartow, the long time coach and athletic director at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was born in Browning, Missouri.
Bobby Gene Bartow (b. August 18, 1930, Browning, Missouri - d. January 3, 2012, Birmingham, Alabama) coached 36 years at six universities after coaching two high schools in Missouri for six years. In 1972, Bartow coached the Puerto Rico national basketball team in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Bartow began his coaching at the prep level in Missouri, coaching Shelbina an St. Charles High School basketball squads to a 145–39 win-loss mark in six seasons. His 1957 St. Charles team won the state championship, defeating North Kansas City in the Class L finals by a score of 60–54.
Bartow coached at Central Missouri State University from 1961 to 1964, Valparaiso University from 1964 to 1970, and Memphis State University from 1970 until 1974, and he led the Memphis State Tigers to the 1973 NCAA national championship game and consecutive Missouri Valley Conference titles in the 1971–72 and 1972–73 seasons. He coached the United States national team in the 1974 FIBA World Championship, winning the bronze medal.
Bartow signed a five-year contract to replace Hary Schmidt at the University of Illinois in 1974. A last-place team the previous campaign, the Fighting Illini finished tied for ninth in the Big Ten at 8–18 (4–14 in the conference) in 1975, Bartow's only season there. Despite this, he was the first Illini coach to extensively recruit talented African American high school players from the Chicago area. He was succeeded by Lou Henson.
Bartow left his position to succeed John Wooden as the head coach of UCLA. Bartow coached at UCLA from 1975 to 1977, guiding them to a 52–9 record, including a berth in the 1976 Final Four. He coached the 1977 College Player of the Year, Marques Johnson. As of 2008, he was the second winningest coach at UCLA by percentage of wins to losses at .852, putting him behind Gary Cunningham at .862 and above John Wooden at .808.
Bartow left UCLA after the 1977 season to take over the job of creating an athletic program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, more commonly known as UAB. He served as the school's first head basketball coach and athletic director for 18 years. Bartow led UAB to the National Invitational Tournament (the NIT) in the program's second year of existence, and followed that up with seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including trips to the Sweet 16 in 1981 and the Elite Eight in 1982.
Bartow retired from coaching in 1996, and in 1997, UAB renamed its basketball venue, Bartow Arena, in his honor. His son Murry, a UAB assistant, became the coach upon Bartow's retirement. Bartow was later president of Hoops, LP, the company that runs the Memphis Grizzlies and the FedEx Forum.
On April 15, 2009, a UAB spokesman revealed that Bartow had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. On January 3, 2012, Gene Bartow died at his home in Birmingham after a two-year battle with the disease.
In 1989, Bartow was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, ten (10) years later, in 1999, Central Missouri State (now the University of Central Missouri) also elected him to theirs. Bartow was also voted one of Valparaiso University's 150 most influential people in October 2009. Bartow was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in Kansas City on November 22, 2009, along with fellow inductees Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Wayman Tisdale, Jud Heathcote, Walter Byers, Travis Grant and Bill Wall. In 2013, Bartow was selected for induction into the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) Hall of Fame.
August 21
*Princess Margaret Rose was born in Glamis Castle in Scotland, younger daughter of Prince Albert, Duke of York (second son of King George V and Queen Mary, and later King George VI) and Elizabeth, Duchess of York, and sister to The Princess Elizabeth.
August 23
*Dai Francis, a Welsh singer best known for his performances with the Black and White Minstrels, was born in Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales.
Dai Francis (b. August 23, 1930, Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales – d. November 27, 2003, Sussex, England) was born in Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales, the son of a music hall entertainer. Dai himself began performing at the age of ten, "blacking up" to sing Dixieland-style numbers. He left school at fourteen to work for the National Coal Board.
During National Service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1946-49, where he served alongside Barry Took, Francis played in a forces band. He later began touring as an entertainer and married fellow performer Elsie Monks in 1952. They had one daughter. In 1954, Francis joined the George Mitchell Singers, and was one of the first soloists to appear in The Black and White Minstrel Show when it made its television debut in 1958. Francis generally appeared at the beginning of the show to announce, "It's the Black and White Minstrel Show", in character as Al Jolson. Together with Tony Mercer and John Boulter, he fronted the troupe in most of the shows until it was taken off the air in 1978. He also appeared in most of their stage shows.
He died November 27, 2003 in Sussex, England.
***
The Black and White Minstrel Show was a British light entertainment show that ran on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) television from 1958 to 1978 and was a popular stage show. It was a weekly light entertainment and variety show presenting traditional American minstrel and country songs, as well as show and music hall numbers, usually performed in blackface, and with lavish costumes.
The show was created by BBC producer George Inns working with George Mitchell. It began as a one-off special in 1957 called The 1957 Television Minstrels featuring the male Mitchell Minstrels (after George Mitchell, the musical director) and the female Television Toppers dancers. The show was first broadcast on the BBC on June 14, 1958. It was popular and soon developed into a regular 45-minute show on Saturday evening prime time television, featuring a sing-along format with both solo and minstrel pieces (often with extended segueing), some country and western and music derived from other foreign folk cultures. The male Minstrels performed in blackface, the female dancers and other supporting artists did not. The show included "comedy interludes" performed by Leslie Crowther, George Chisholm and Stan Stennett. It was initially produced by George Inns with George Mitchell. The Minstrels' main soloists were baritone Dai Francis, tenor John Boulter, and bass Tony Mercer. During the nine years that the show was broadcast in black and white, the blackface makeup was actually red as black did not film very well.
Prior to the creation of the Television Minstrels Show in 1957 the Television Toppers were already very popular and The BBC Television Toppers first performed in 1953 which was aired on television for the first time February 1953. Originally the Television Toppers were dancers who performed weekly on a television show every Saturday night alongside different celebrities each week, such as Judy Garland. They also performed at Royal Command Performances. They were newspaper Entertainment mini celebrities, and headlined as earning £1000 a year in 1953.
The BBC Television Toppers were loaned for one day by the BBC under contract and appear in the iconic 1955 film The Dambusters in the spotlight theater dancing scene. The filming of this scene was at The Lyric Hammersmith. No credits are shown on this film as to who the dancers were or the location of the theater.
By 1964, the show was achieving viewing figures of 21 million. The Minstrels also had a theatrical show produced by Robert Luff which ran for 6,477 performances from 1962 to 1972 and established itself in The Guinness Book of Records as the stage show seen by the largest number of people. At this time, the creation gained considerable international regard. In 1961 the show won a Golden Rose at Montreux for best light entertainment program and the first three albums of songs (1960–1962) all did extremely well, the first two being long-running #1 albums on the United Kingdom Albums Chart. The first of these became the first album in United Kingdom album sales history to pass 100,000 sales.
While it started off being broadcast in black and white, the show was one of the very first to be shown in color on BBC2 in 1967.
Several famous personalities guested on the show, while others started their careers there. Comedian Lenny Henry was one such star, being the first black comedian to appear, in 1975. In July 2009, Lenny Henry explained that he was contractually obliged to perform and regretted his part in the show.
The show's premise began to be seen as offensive on account of its portrayal of blacked-up characters behaving in a stereotypical manner and a petition against it was received by the BBC in 1967. In 1969, due to continuing accusations of racism, Music Music Music, a spin-off series in which the minstrels appeared without their blackface make-up, replaced The Black and White Minstrel Show. It failed badly, was cancelled after 10 episodes and The Black and White Minstrel Show returned to win back viewers.
After its cancellation, The Black and White Minstrel Show came to be seen more widely as an embarrassment, despite its huge popularity at the time.
The BBC1 TV show was cancelled in 1978 as part of a reduction in variety programming (by this point the blackface element had been reduced), while the stage show continued. Having left the Victoria Palace Theater, where the stage show played from 1962 to 1972, the show toured almost every year to various big city and seaside resort theaters around the United Kingdom, including The Futurist in Scarborough, The Winter Gardens in Morecambe, The Festival Theatre in Paignton, The Congress Theatre in Eastbourne and The Pavilion Theatre in Bournemouth. This continued every year until 1992, when a final tour of three Butlins resorts (Minehead, Bognor Regis, and Barry Island) saw the last official Black and White Minstrel Show on stage.
In the late 1960s, Music Music Music, a "whiteface" version of the show, was tried, only to lose viewers. In a 1971 episode of The Two Ronnies, a musical sketch, "The Short and Fat Minstrel Show", was performed as a parody of The Black and White Minstrel Show, featuring spoofs of various songs. "Alternative Roots", an episode of the BBC comedy series The Goodies, spoofed the popularity of The Black and White Minstrel Show, suggesting that any program could double its viewing figures by being performed in blackface, and mentioning that a series of The Black and White Minstrel Show had been tried without make up. The Are You Being Served? episode "Roots" featured a storyline in which Mr. Grace's lineage was traced in order to perform an appropriate song and dance for his 90th birthday. The end result was a number that parodied The Black and White Minstrel Show by having the male performers in blackface while the females (excluding Mrs. Slocombe) were not.
*****
August 25
*Augusto Leguia, President of Peru, resigned and fled the country after holding office for eleven (11) years. He was driven out by a military insurrection led by Colonel Luis Cerro, who would be elected President in 1931.
August 23
*Dai Francis, a Welsh singer best known for his performances with the Black and White Minstrels, was born in Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales.
Dai Francis (b. August 23, 1930, Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales – d. November 27, 2003, Sussex, England) was born in Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales, the son of a music hall entertainer. Dai himself began performing at the age of ten, "blacking up" to sing Dixieland-style numbers. He left school at fourteen to work for the National Coal Board.
During National Service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1946-49, where he served alongside Barry Took, Francis played in a forces band. He later began touring as an entertainer and married fellow performer Elsie Monks in 1952. They had one daughter. In 1954, Francis joined the George Mitchell Singers, and was one of the first soloists to appear in The Black and White Minstrel Show when it made its television debut in 1958. Francis generally appeared at the beginning of the show to announce, "It's the Black and White Minstrel Show", in character as Al Jolson. Together with Tony Mercer and John Boulter, he fronted the troupe in most of the shows until it was taken off the air in 1978. He also appeared in most of their stage shows.
He died November 27, 2003 in Sussex, England.
***
The Black and White Minstrel Show was a British light entertainment show that ran on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) television from 1958 to 1978 and was a popular stage show. It was a weekly light entertainment and variety show presenting traditional American minstrel and country songs, as well as show and music hall numbers, usually performed in blackface, and with lavish costumes.
The show was created by BBC producer George Inns working with George Mitchell. It began as a one-off special in 1957 called The 1957 Television Minstrels featuring the male Mitchell Minstrels (after George Mitchell, the musical director) and the female Television Toppers dancers. The show was first broadcast on the BBC on June 14, 1958. It was popular and soon developed into a regular 45-minute show on Saturday evening prime time television, featuring a sing-along format with both solo and minstrel pieces (often with extended segueing), some country and western and music derived from other foreign folk cultures. The male Minstrels performed in blackface, the female dancers and other supporting artists did not. The show included "comedy interludes" performed by Leslie Crowther, George Chisholm and Stan Stennett. It was initially produced by George Inns with George Mitchell. The Minstrels' main soloists were baritone Dai Francis, tenor John Boulter, and bass Tony Mercer. During the nine years that the show was broadcast in black and white, the blackface makeup was actually red as black did not film very well.
Prior to the creation of the Television Minstrels Show in 1957 the Television Toppers were already very popular and The BBC Television Toppers first performed in 1953 which was aired on television for the first time February 1953. Originally the Television Toppers were dancers who performed weekly on a television show every Saturday night alongside different celebrities each week, such as Judy Garland. They also performed at Royal Command Performances. They were newspaper Entertainment mini celebrities, and headlined as earning £1000 a year in 1953.
The BBC Television Toppers were loaned for one day by the BBC under contract and appear in the iconic 1955 film The Dambusters in the spotlight theater dancing scene. The filming of this scene was at The Lyric Hammersmith. No credits are shown on this film as to who the dancers were or the location of the theater.
By 1964, the show was achieving viewing figures of 21 million. The Minstrels also had a theatrical show produced by Robert Luff which ran for 6,477 performances from 1962 to 1972 and established itself in The Guinness Book of Records as the stage show seen by the largest number of people. At this time, the creation gained considerable international regard. In 1961 the show won a Golden Rose at Montreux for best light entertainment program and the first three albums of songs (1960–1962) all did extremely well, the first two being long-running #1 albums on the United Kingdom Albums Chart. The first of these became the first album in United Kingdom album sales history to pass 100,000 sales.
While it started off being broadcast in black and white, the show was one of the very first to be shown in color on BBC2 in 1967.
Several famous personalities guested on the show, while others started their careers there. Comedian Lenny Henry was one such star, being the first black comedian to appear, in 1975. In July 2009, Lenny Henry explained that he was contractually obliged to perform and regretted his part in the show.
The show's premise began to be seen as offensive on account of its portrayal of blacked-up characters behaving in a stereotypical manner and a petition against it was received by the BBC in 1967. In 1969, due to continuing accusations of racism, Music Music Music, a spin-off series in which the minstrels appeared without their blackface make-up, replaced The Black and White Minstrel Show. It failed badly, was cancelled after 10 episodes and The Black and White Minstrel Show returned to win back viewers.
After its cancellation, The Black and White Minstrel Show came to be seen more widely as an embarrassment, despite its huge popularity at the time.
The BBC1 TV show was cancelled in 1978 as part of a reduction in variety programming (by this point the blackface element had been reduced), while the stage show continued. Having left the Victoria Palace Theater, where the stage show played from 1962 to 1972, the show toured almost every year to various big city and seaside resort theaters around the United Kingdom, including The Futurist in Scarborough, The Winter Gardens in Morecambe, The Festival Theatre in Paignton, The Congress Theatre in Eastbourne and The Pavilion Theatre in Bournemouth. This continued every year until 1992, when a final tour of three Butlins resorts (Minehead, Bognor Regis, and Barry Island) saw the last official Black and White Minstrel Show on stage.
In the late 1960s, Music Music Music, a "whiteface" version of the show, was tried, only to lose viewers. In a 1971 episode of The Two Ronnies, a musical sketch, "The Short and Fat Minstrel Show", was performed as a parody of The Black and White Minstrel Show, featuring spoofs of various songs. "Alternative Roots", an episode of the BBC comedy series The Goodies, spoofed the popularity of The Black and White Minstrel Show, suggesting that any program could double its viewing figures by being performed in blackface, and mentioning that a series of The Black and White Minstrel Show had been tried without make up. The Are You Being Served? episode "Roots" featured a storyline in which Mr. Grace's lineage was traced in order to perform an appropriate song and dance for his 90th birthday. The end result was a number that parodied The Black and White Minstrel Show by having the male performers in blackface while the females (excluding Mrs. Slocombe) were not.
*****
August 25
August 27
*A military junta took over in Peru.
August 28
*Kyoko Hayashi, a Japanese author who was known for her works based on her experiences as a survivor of the nuclear bomb blast at Nagasaki, was born in Nagasaki, Japan.
Kyōko Hayashi (林 京子 Hayashi Kyōko, b. August 28, 1930, Nagasaki, Japan - b. February 19, 2017) whose real name was Kyoko Miyazaki, spent her childhood in Shanghai, where her father worked.
Hayashi was born in Nagasaki and spent the years from 1931-1945 with her family in Shanghai. She returned to Nagasaki in March 1945 and enrolled in Nagasaki Girls' High School, where she was mobilized in the Mitsubishi Munitions Factory. She was working at the factory when the atomic bomb blast destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Hayashi was seriously ill for two months, and suffered afterwards from fragile health. She later studied nursing in a special course the Welfare Faculty for Women attached to Nagasaki Medical School, but left before graduation. She started to write in 1962.
In 1967, her story "Procession on a Cloudy Day" (Kumoribi no kōshin) was published in Bungei Shuto. She first drew wide attention in 1975 with an autobiographical story about the bombing, "Ritual of Death" (Matsuri no ba), which received that year's Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan's most sought after literary prizes. "Two Grave Markers" (Futari No Bohyō), also based on her experiences in the bombing, was published that same year. Her works in the 1970s also include a collection of twelve short stories titled Gyaman bi-doro ("Cut glass, blown glass"), containing "The Empty Can" (Aki kan) and "Yellow Sand" (Kousa), both first published in 1978.
In 1980, Hayashi published her first full-length novel, Naki ga gotoki (As if nothing had happened), with a semi-autobiographical lead character. The Nagasaki theme continued through the 1980s with her collections Sangai no ie (Home in the three worlds), which won the Kawabata Prize, and Michi (The Path). Her work Yasurakani ima wa nemuri tamae won the 1990 Tunizaki Prize.
August 31
*Luke Headley, a private detective known for his investigation of the Patty Hearst kidnapping, was born in Indiana.
Lake Wellington Headley (August 31, 1930 - May 15, 1992) was a private detective and writer. He developed a name for himself as supersleuth. He also wrote about much of the crime he investigated in a series of true crime books. Some of the evidence he uncovered caused convictions to be overturned.
Lake Headley was born in Indiana. He attended Goshen High School in Indiana. In the yearbook for 1948, at around age 16, he stated that he wished to be a lawyer.
Headley began his career as a police officer in Las Vegas, but his killing of a suspect, as a young officer, prompted him to quit policing and become a private investigator. In 1962, he left the force, where he was a detective, to become one of the first private detectives in Las Vegas. He went on to work for thirty years in the field, and was considered one of the best. Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi called Headley, "the best private investigator on earth."
During the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga, two of the families of Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) members, including Willie Wolfe's father, contracted Headley to investigate the matter.
Headley concluded his investigation, and filed a sworn affidavit of his findings. Among these included:
- "That Patricia Campbell Hearst and her parents disagreed bitterly over Patricia's political and personal relations. That a love affair between a black man and Patricia Hearst did take place prior to her relationship with her fiancé Steven Weed. That Mrs. Randolph A. Hearst subjected her daughter to extreme pressure to change her personal and political relationships."
On May 4, 1974, Headley, along with freelance writer Donald Freed, held a press conference in San Francisco. They presented 400 pages of documentation of their findings, some of which included:
- a year before the kidnapping Patty Hearst had visited black convict, Donald DeFreeze, who later became the SLA's figurehead;
- DeFreeze's arrest records;
- the work of Colston Westbrook with Los Angeles Police Department's CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section) and the State of California's Sacramento-based CII (Criminal Identification and Investigation) unit.; and
- evidence of links of the CIA to Police Departments.
On May 17, 1974, The New York Times ran the story of DeFreeze and the Los Angeles Police Department. However, the story was largely overlooked due to this being the day of the shoot out and conflagration that killed DeFreeze and five other members of the SLA.
In a book he co-wrote with freelance writer, William Hoffman, Vegas P.I.: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Detective, he presented well-documented evidence that Donald DeFreeze, was a police informant and an agent provocateur.
Headley also uncovered evidence that, in the house fire in Los Angeles that killed six members of the SLA, at least one of the suspects was shot in the back while trying to surrender.
Headley's wife was Terri Lee Yoder. She was originally his assistant and they married in 1981.
Headley died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) in 1992.
In 1980, Hayashi published her first full-length novel, Naki ga gotoki (As if nothing had happened), with a semi-autobiographical lead character. The Nagasaki theme continued through the 1980s with her collections Sangai no ie (Home in the three worlds), which won the Kawabata Prize, and Michi (The Path). Her work Yasurakani ima wa nemuri tamae won the 1990 Tunizaki Prize.
August 31
*Luke Headley, a private detective known for his investigation of the Patty Hearst kidnapping, was born in Indiana.
Lake Wellington Headley (August 31, 1930 - May 15, 1992) was a private detective and writer. He developed a name for himself as supersleuth. He also wrote about much of the crime he investigated in a series of true crime books. Some of the evidence he uncovered caused convictions to be overturned.
Lake Headley was born in Indiana. He attended Goshen High School in Indiana. In the yearbook for 1948, at around age 16, he stated that he wished to be a lawyer.
Headley began his career as a police officer in Las Vegas, but his killing of a suspect, as a young officer, prompted him to quit policing and become a private investigator. In 1962, he left the force, where he was a detective, to become one of the first private detectives in Las Vegas. He went on to work for thirty years in the field, and was considered one of the best. Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi called Headley, "the best private investigator on earth."
During the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga, two of the families of Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) members, including Willie Wolfe's father, contracted Headley to investigate the matter.
Headley concluded his investigation, and filed a sworn affidavit of his findings. Among these included:
- "That Patricia Campbell Hearst and her parents disagreed bitterly over Patricia's political and personal relations. That a love affair between a black man and Patricia Hearst did take place prior to her relationship with her fiancé Steven Weed. That Mrs. Randolph A. Hearst subjected her daughter to extreme pressure to change her personal and political relationships."
On May 4, 1974, Headley, along with freelance writer Donald Freed, held a press conference in San Francisco. They presented 400 pages of documentation of their findings, some of which included:
- a year before the kidnapping Patty Hearst had visited black convict, Donald DeFreeze, who later became the SLA's figurehead;
- DeFreeze's arrest records;
- the work of Colston Westbrook with Los Angeles Police Department's CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section) and the State of California's Sacramento-based CII (Criminal Identification and Investigation) unit.; and
- evidence of links of the CIA to Police Departments.
On May 17, 1974, The New York Times ran the story of DeFreeze and the Los Angeles Police Department. However, the story was largely overlooked due to this being the day of the shoot out and conflagration that killed DeFreeze and five other members of the SLA.
In a book he co-wrote with freelance writer, William Hoffman, Vegas P.I.: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Detective, he presented well-documented evidence that Donald DeFreeze, was a police informant and an agent provocateur.
Headley also uncovered evidence that, in the house fire in Los Angeles that killed six members of the SLA, at least one of the suspects was shot in the back while trying to surrender.
Headley's wife was Terri Lee Yoder. She was originally his assistant and they married in 1981.
Headley died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) in 1992.
September 1
*Tunney Hunsaker, an American professional boxer who also served as the police chief of Fayetteville, West Virginia, was born in Princeton, Caldwell County, Kentucky. Hunsaker is best known for being Muhammad Ali's first opponent in a professional boxing match.
Tunney Morgan Hunsaker (b. September 1, 1930, Princeton, Kentucky – d. April 27, 2005) served as Fayetteville police chief for 38 years, and was later inducted into the Law Enforcement Hall of Fame.
In his youth, Hunsaker served honorably in the United States Air Force, stationed at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas.
In 1960, Hunsaker was the first opponent of Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) in a professional boxing bout. After the fight Hunsaker said, "Clay was as fast as lightning ... I tried every trick I knew to throw him off balance but he was just too good". In a thumbnail profile of the fight the following January, young Cassius was reported as having remarked that Hunsaker's style was far different from what Clay had been exposed to as an amateur and Olympian; the young fighter admitted to nervousness going in, and that Hunsaker's aforementioned pro style, had given him trouble. This respect appears genuine, as it was lasting—in his autobiography, Ali said Hunsaker dealt him one of the hardest body blows he ever took in his career. Ali and Hunsaker became good friends and stayed in touch over the years. Hunsaker said he did not agree with Ali's decision to refuse military service, but praised him as a great humanitarian and athlete.
In the fight game, Hunsaker was a small heavyweight, perhaps better suited for light-heavy classification (175 lbs. limit); today, he would most likely compete as a cruiserweight (190 lbs. limit). He fought as a boxer-puncher. Hunsaker once appeared on the undercard at Madison Square Garden. Hunsaker ended up with a record of 17 wins with 15 defeats with 8 wins by way of KO. His career ended after a boxing-related head injury suffered on April 6, 1962, in Beckley, West Virginia. Rushed to a Beckley hospital, Hunsaker was in a coma for five days during which he underwent two brain operations. Hunsaker suffered the physical effects of his last match for the rest of his life. He was 74 when he died after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.
September 2
*Paulo Francis, a Brazilian journalist, political pundit, novelist and critic, was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Paulo Francis (b. September 2, 1930, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – d. February 4, 1997, New York City, New York)
became prominent in modern Brazilian journalism through his controversial critiques and essays with a trademark writing style, which mixed erudition and vulgarity. Like many other Brazilian intellectuals of his time, Francis was exposed to Americanization during his teens. In his early career, Francis tried to blend Brazilian Nationalist Leftism in Culture and Politics with the ideal of modernity embodied by the United States. He acted mostly as an advocate of Modernism in cultural matters, later becoming embroiled in Brazil's 1960s political struggles as a Trotskyist sympathizer and a Leftist nationalist, while at the same time keeping a distance from both Stalinism and Latin American populims. After spending the 1970s as an exile and expatriate in the United States, in the 1980s he forsook Leftism for Americanism's sake, performing a sharp political turn into aggressive conservatism, defending the Free Market and political liberalism, and became an uncompromising anti-Leftist. In this capacity, he estranged himself from the Brazilian intelligentsia and became mostly a media figure, a role that entangled him in a legal suit until his death in 1997.
September 3
*A huge hurricane in the Caribbean demolished most of the city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
September 4
*Ann Dummett, an English activist and campaigner for racial justice, was born in London, England.
September 5
*Ann Dummett, an English activist and campaigner for racial justice, was born in London, England.
Ann, Lady Dummett (b. Agnes Margaret Ann Chesney. September 4, 1930, London, England – d. February 7, 2012, Oxford, England) was born at St. George Hanover Square, London, the daughter of actor Arthur Chesney. She was related to actors Edmund Gwenn and Cecil Kellaway. She attended Ware Grammar School for Girls and Somerville College, Oxford. In 1951, she married the philosopher Michael Dummett. With Evan Luard, Oxford's Member of Parliament, they founded the Oxford Committee for Racial Integration, forerunner to Oxfordshire Council for Community Relations, and she became a full-time community relations officer.
Dummett went on to work at the Institute of Race Relations, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the Runnymede Trust of which she was director from 1984 to 1987. Dummett died on February 7, 2012 in Oxford, England from unknown causes, six weeks after the death of her husband, Michael.
*There was a military coup in Argentina.
September 6
*Jose Felix Uriburu carried out a military coup, overthrowing Hipolito Yrigoyen, President of Argentina.
*****
*Jack Curran, an American baseball and basketball coach who, as the head coach at Archbishop Molloy High School of Queens, New York, won more baseball and basketball games than any high school coach in the United States, was born in New York City, New York.
*Jack Curran, an American baseball and basketball coach who, as the head coach at Archbishop Molloy High School of Queens, New York, won more baseball and basketball games than any high school coach in the United States, was born in New York City, New York.
John Joseph "Jack" Curran (b. September 6, 1930, New York City, New York – d. March 14, 2013, Rye, New York) was born on September 6, 1930, the son of New York City police officer Thomas Curran and Helen Curran, who worked in the New York City Police Commissioner's office.
Curran graduated in 1948 from All Hallows High School in Bronx, New York. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from St. John's University, where he became a pitcher of the varsity team.
Curran played minor league baseball in the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies organizations.
Curran began coaching in 1958 at St. Ann’s Academy, which was later renamed Archbishop Molloy High School. During his career at Archbishop Molloy, Curran won more basketball and baseball games than any high school coach in the United States. He finished with a basketball record of 972-437, while winning 1,708 baseball games and losing just 523. His overall winning percentage was 74%.
Among his former players are the former National Basketball Association players Brian Winters, Kevin Joyce, Kenny Smith, Robert Werdann and Kenny Anderson.
Curran was named Catholic High School Athletic Association (CHSAA) Coach of the Year 25 times in baseball, 22 times in basketball, and won city championships in three different decades.
He has been elected into nine different Halls of Fame, including the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame.
On February 8, 2008, the school community honored his 50th year as head coach of baseball and basketball by unveiling a mural of the coach "though the years" after a game against St. Francis Prep.
Curran died on March 14, 2013 at the age of 82.
******
*Johannes Human (b. September 6, 1930, Bloemfontein, South Africa - d. Jamiary 20, 1997, Bloemfontein, South Africa), a South African sports shooter who competed at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, and the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
September 7
*****
*****
******
*Johannes Human (b. September 6, 1930, Bloemfontein, South Africa - d. Jamiary 20, 1997, Bloemfontein, South Africa), a South African sports shooter who competed at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, and the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
September 7
*****
*Tom Hulatt, an English athlete best known for finishing third behind Christopher Chataway in the historic race in which Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four minute mile, was born in Tibshelf, Derbyshire, England.
William Thomas "Tom" Hulatt (b. September 7, 1930, Tibshelf, Derbyshire, England – d. May 21, 1990) was an English athlete notable for finishing third behind Christopher Chataway in the historic race in which Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four minute mile on May 6, 1954. He was from a working-class family and the only runner in the race who was not a university student.
Hulatt was born in Tibshelf, Derbyshire, and after leaving school he joined the army but bought himself out. He worked as a miner at Williamthorpe Colliery and he would run five miles there and back each day. He also worked as a council rat catcher and in his spare time he ran for Alfreton Athletics Club, Chesterfield Harriers, Hallamshire Harriers, and London Polytechnic. He was the Derbyshire and Northern Counties One Mile Champion in 1953 and 1954.
The historic four-minute mile event took place during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University at Iffley Road Track in Oxford and was watched by about 3,000 spectators. Bannister's time was 3 minutes 59.4 seconds and Hulatt recorded a time of 4 minutes and 16 seconds. Hulatt ran on the same AAA team as Bannister, Chris Chataway, and Chris Brasher, but these three were conspiring to pace Bannister to break the record. Pacing was not allowed.
Hulatt was told before the race by Bannister to run his own race, and he was not involved in the pacing. Hulatt was not interviewed after the race and he returned home with his brother with a program signed by Bannister, Chataway and Brasher.
Hulatt suffered an Achilles tendon injury in 1960, and in his later years he did some coaching, but only ran at the annual Tibshelf Horticultural Show. He died at the age of 59 and was buried in the grounds of St. John the Baptist Church, Tibshelf. On the fiftieth anniversary of his run, a one mile stretch of the Five Pits Trail was designed as the 'Tom Hulatt Mile' identified by two marker stones, with inscribed plaques, in coal measures sandstone donated by the National Trust.
*****
September 10
*Jose Ferreira, known by his pen name Ferreira Gullar, a Brazilian poet, playwright, essayist, art critic and television writer who was instrumental in the formation of the Neo-Concrete Movement, was born.
In 1959, José Ribamar Ferreira (b. September 10, 1930, Sao Luis, Maranhao, Brazil – d. December 4, 2016, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), known by his pen name Ferreira Gullar, wrote the Neo-Concrete Manifesto. The Neo-Concrete Manifesto begins:
As seen in this excerpt, the Neo-Concrete Movement seeks to move beyond the Concrete Artist’s ideal of mathematical purity in art and embrace phenomenology. Gullar continues on in his manifesto to call for an artwork that “amounts to more than the sum of its constituent elements; something which analysis may break down into various elements but which can only be understood phenomenologically.” The Neo-Concretists believed artworks should interact with the spectator and make the spectator more aware of his or her physical body and metaphysical existence. It is only with the participation of the spectator that the artwork becomes complete.
Ferreira Gullar was born in Sao Luis, Maranhao, Northeast Brazil. He was exiled by the Brazilian dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985.
In 1975, while living in Chile, Gullar wrote his best-known work, "Poema Sujo" ("Dirty Poem" in English), in which he attributes his decision to stop writing poetry to the increasing persecution of exiles, many of whom were found dead, and to hypothetical thoughts about his own death. He spent months writing the more than 2,000 verses that constitute the poem. "Dirty Poem" draws on his memories of childhood and adolescence in São Luís, Maranhão, and his anguish at being far from his homeland.
Gullar read the poem at Augusto Boal's house in Buenos Aires during a meeting organized by Vinicus de Moraes. The reading, recorded on tape, became well-known among Brazilian intellectuals, who aided Gullar's return to Brazil in 1977, where he continued writing for newspapers and publishing books. He also had a weekly column in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, published on Sundays.
In 2002 Gullar was honored with a Prince Claus Award from the Dutch organisation, the Prince Claus Fund.
Gullar was considered one of the most influential Brazilians of the 20th century by Epoca magazine, and was awarded the Jabuti Prize for best fiction book in 2007. The magazine recalls its critical stance in opinion articles about the populism of former President Lula da Silva, posted in national newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.
On October 9, 2014, Gullar was elected as a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
Gullar died of pneumonia on December 4, 2016.
September 12
*England cricketer Wilfred Rhodes ended his 1,110-game first-class career by taking 5 for 95 for H. D. G. Leveson Gower's XI against the Australians.
September 14
*In the German Reichstag elections, the Nazi Party won almost 6.5 million votes (up from 800,000 in 1928), compared with the 8.4 million garnered by the Socialists. The Nazis won 107 seats, up from 12 in the old Reichstag. However, Adolf Hitler was barred from taking his seat because of his Austrian citizenship.
*In the German Reichstag elections, the Nazi Party won almost 6.5 million votes (up from 800,000 in 1928), compared with the 8.4 million garnered by the Socialists. The Nazis won 107 seats, up from 12 in the old Reichstag. However, Adolf Hitler was barred from taking his seat because of his Austrian citizenship.
September 20
*The Eastern Catholic Rite Syro-Malankara Catholic Church was formed.
September 22
*Joni James, an American singer who sold over 100 million records, was born in Chicago, Illinois (September 22).
Joni James (b. Joan Carmella Babbo, September 22, 1930, Chicago, Illinois) was born to an Italian-American family in Chicago, one of six children supported by her widowed mother. As an adolescent, she studied drama and ballet, and on graduating from Bowen High School, located in the South Chicago neighborhood, went with a local dance group on a tour of Canada. She then took a job as a chorus girl in the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago.
After doing a fill-in in Indiana, she decided to pursue a singing career. Some executives at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) spotted her in a television commercial, and she was signed by MGM in 1952. Her first hit, "Why Don't You Believe Me?" sold over two million copies. She had a number of hits following that one, including "Your Cheatin' Heart" (a cover of Hank Williams' hit) and "Have You Heard?".
She was the first American to record at London's Abbey Road Studios, and recorded five albums there. She was also very popular across parts of the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in the Philippines where she performed at Manila's now defunct EM Club in 1957. She also scored a big hit in Manila with Filipino composer Salvador Asuncion's work entitled "In Despair."
James had seven Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. "Why Don't You Believe Me?" (#1 in 1952); "Have You Heard?" (#4 in 1953); "Your Cheatin' Heart" (#2 in 1953); "Almost Always" (#9 in 1953); "My Love, My Love" (#8 in 1953); "How Important Can It Be?" (#2 in 1955); and "You Are My Love" (#6 in 1955) as well as sixteen other Top 40 hits from 1952 to 1961. Joni James sold more than 100 million records and recorded more than 25 albums.
James married composer-conductor Tony Acquaviva at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City in 1956. In 1964, she retired from the music industry in part because Acquaviva was in bad health and needed her attention. She cared for him until his death in 1986.
In 1986 she met, and on October 5, 1997, she married retired Air Force General Bernard Adolph Schriever, 20 years her senior, the leader of the crash program that developed United States ballistic missiles -- both ICBMs and IRBMs in 1953–1962. They honeymooned in France and the Greek Isles, then took up residence in Schriever's home in northwest Washington, D. C. Schriever died on June 20, 2005, at the age of 94.
For many years she was out of the public eye, but began touring again in the mid-1990s some years after she was widowed, performing memorable concerts at New York's Town Hall, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall.
In October 2001, just a few weeks after 9/11, she appeared at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, accompanied by the Count Basie orchestra. The streets of the city were still lined with armed soldiers, and she was a guest of honor at the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Tribute to Barbra Streisand. With her renewed popularity, nearly her entire body of work was released on the Capitol-EMI, DRG and Taragon labels under her personal supervision and in 2000 she released a brand-new recording, "Latest and Greatest".
For her contributions to the entertainment industry, James has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
September 26
*Larry Fleisher, an American attorney and sports agent, was born in the Bronx, New York.
Lawrence "Larry" Fleisher (b. September 26, 1930, Bronx, New York — d. May 4, 1989, New York City, New York) was a 1953 graduate of Harvard Law School who, at the request of professional basketball player Tom Heinsohn, helped found the National Basketball Association (NBA) Players' Association, of which he would serve as president from 1962 to 1968, during which time pensions, minimum salaries, and disability pay were secured for the membership.
For 19 additional years, Fleisher would continue to serve, without salary, as general counsel for the Players’ Association, notably arguing before Congress and the National Labor Relations Board to gain players the right of free agency, which right was eventually won in 1976.
Having guided players to the American Basketball Association (ABA) in the late 1960s, Fleisher later helped broker the merger between the ABA and NBA and worked to set up relationships between the NBA and professional leagues in Europe and South America. He would represent little-known foreign players as well as established American stars, including Bill Bradley, John Havlicek, Bob Lanier, Willis Reed, and Jerry West, and, in an effort to promote basketball globally, would lead his clients on playing tours to Europe, South America, and Asia.
Prior to his 1987 retirement, Fleisher helped broker a labor agreement that installed a salary cap on NBA franchises and provided for penalties for players caught using hard drugs.
He died from a heart attack after playing squash at the New York Athletic Club.
In recognition of his achievements in the game of basketball, Fleisher was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor in 1991.
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