On this day in 1970 ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ by Simon and Garfunkel made it to number one in the UK and stayed there for 3 weeks.
“Bridge over Troubled Water” is the title song of Simon & Garfunkel’s album of the same name. The single also topped the adult contemporary chart in the U.S. for six weeks.
This song’s recording process exposed many of the underlying tensions that eventually led to the breakup of the duo after the album’s completion. Most notably, Paul Simon has repeatedly expressed regret over his insistence that Art Garfunkel sing this song as a solo, as it focused attention on Garfunkel and relegated Simon to a secondary position. Art Garfunkel initially did not want to sing lead vocal, feeling it was not right for him. “He felt I should have done it,” Paul Simon revealed to Rolling Stone magazine in 1972.
In performances on the 2003 “Old Friends” tour, Simon and Garfunkel took turns singing alternate verses of the vocal. Rolling Stone magazine named it number 47 on The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Did you know?
The single won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in the Grammy Awards of 1971, with its album also winning several awards in the same year.
On this day in 1871 the first international rugby game was held, with a result of Scotland 1, England 0.
The first international rugby game resulted from a challenge signed by the captains of five Scottish clubs, inviting any team “selected from the whole of England” to a 20-a-side game to be played under the Rugby rules. The game was played at Raeburn Place, Edinburgh on 27 March 1871.
The English team wore all white with a red rose on their shirts and the Scots brown shirts with a thistle and white cricket flannels. The team representing England was captained by Frederick Stokes of Blackheath, that representing Scotland was led by Francis Moncrieff; the umpire was Hely Hutchinson Almond, headmaster of Loretto College.
On the day of the match an advertisement appeared in the “The Scotsman” indicating the time and the place and an entrance fee of one shilling. 4,000 people paid to go through the gate at Raeburn Place raising a sum in excess of £200, a considerable sum for the time. The game, played over two halves, each of 50 minutes, was won by Scotland. Both sides achieved a further ‘try’ each, but failed to convert them to goals as the kicks were missed (see also ‘Method of Scoring and Points’ below).
Angus Buchanan of Royal High School FP and Edinburgh University RFC was the first man to score a try in international rugby. The methods of scoring were very different than that seen today. The try, which is now accorded 5 points and is very much seen as the principle means of scoring, was then not considered worthy of anything. The try provided an opportunity to kick at the posts, a “try at goal”, the ball going over the post was the score and was a goal, what we now call the conversion. There were no penalty goals, as it was accepted that gentlemen would not cheat.
In a return match at the Kennington Oval, London, in 1872, England were the winners.
On this day in 1962, the Guardian published this story.
An interesting article re-published by the Guardian online found in their archives from 26th March 1962; describing the opinions held by our European neighbours of sunny old blighty and it’s inhabitants.
A land of fog, custard and pastry. That was how a Norwegian girl of 24 thought of England before she came here. A Swedish girl imagined grey houses, green lawns, damp, and wet.
Guess the great British weather just isn't for some people?
To an Italian woman it would be “a welfare state with the best conception of Utopia in the world. Besides that, a country which offers everything in a sort of immature way.”
Those comments were elicited during a survey of young people from Europe attending classes in English at either State or private schools. A broadsheet based on the survey, which was carried out by Mr T.N. Postlethwaite, lately assistant lecturer in the Liberal Studies department of St Albans College of Further Education, is published by PEP. The survey showed that opinions of England (before coming here) were generally favourable (45 per cent to 36 per cent).
The young Europeans were next asked: “Now that you have lived in England for a time, if a friend from your own country asked you to make a list of the good characteristics and the bad characteristics that you think English people have, what would you write?”
Looking for the good, 55 per cent found that the English were kind, polite, helpful, obliging, hospitable, friendly, generous, and nice to foreigners.
A typical remark (by a 23-year-old Austrian girl):
“Very calm when there is a difficult situation. Reserved – not interfering or inquisitive, live their own lives, and let others live theirs; humorous, extremely helpful towards strangers. I find the people in Scotland even more so.”
On the critical side there was also a high degree of unanimity. Thirty seven per cent of the replies found the English insincere, false, “too polite to speak the truth,” hypocrites, without feeling and that it was often impossible to know what they were thinking or feeling.
A young Swiss wrote:
“Like scandals, sometimes love animals more than people, women smoke in public; shocking behaviour of the pairs of lovers in parks, rather don’t mix with foreigners, cook very badly, have laws which should have been changed long ago, never like Americans, girls are too much made up, men often look unclean.”
An Italian girl of 19 struck what may have been an aggrieved note with the observation that Englishmen did not show enough interest in women.
The broadsheet remarks that those who were very anti-English were a rather special group living in Central London, were either Italian or Spanish, and most of whom were au pair girls between the ages of 18 and 23. Asked about discrimination because of their nationality, 18 per cent claimed they had experienced this. Just over half of all the Germans questioned believed that there was discrimination against Germans in this country.
The survey also studied the criticisms that au pair girls were often unhappy and overworked. Eighty per cent of the girls thought that they were well treated; 14 per cent that they were treated fairly and only six per cent felt that they were not well treated, mostly on the grounds that they did not always get enough time off or that they were regarded as a servant or an inferior.
The sample comprising 417 young people (89 per cent girls) was drawn from four areas – Central London, the Home Counties, Oxford, and Cambridge. Germans were the largest national group.
On March 26, 1997, 39 followers of Heaven’s Gate died in a mass suicide in California.
These people believed, that through their suicides, their souls could go on a journey aboard a spaceship they believed to be following comet Hale-Bopp. Some male members of the cult underwent voluntary castration in preparation for the genderless life they believed awaited them after the suicide. On 30 March 1997, Thomas Nichols, younger brother of actress Nichelle Nichols (Uhura in the Star Trek television series), was discovered dead in his California trailer, with a note nearby that read, “I’m going to the spaceship with Hale-Bopp to be with those who have gone before me.” Using propane gas to end his life, Nichols, like the members of Heaven’s Gate, had his head covered by a plastic bag and his upper torso covered with a purple shroud.
In May 1997, two Heaven’s Gate members who had not been present for the attempted mass suicide, one completing in the attempt, the other going into coma for two days and then recovering. Wayne Cooke and Charlie Humphreys, later committed suicide in a similar manner to the group. Humphreys had survived a suicide pact with Cooke in May 1997, but ultimately committed suicide in February 1998.
On March 19 1997, Marshall Applewhite taped himself speaking of mass suicide. The Heaven’s Gate group was against suicide but they believed they had no choice but to leave Earth as quickly as possible. After claiming that a space craft was trailing the comet Hale-Bopp, Applewhite convinced 38 followers to commit suicide so that their souls could board the space craft. Applewhite believed that after their deaths, a UFO would take their souls to another “level of existence above human”. This and other UFO-related beliefs held by the group have led some observers to characterize the group as a type of UFO religion. In October 1996, the group purchased alien abduction insurance to cover up to 50 members at a cost of $10,000.
The cult rented a 9,200-sq.-ft. mansion, located in a gated community of upscale homes in the San Diego area community of Rancho Santa Fe, California from Sam Koutchesfahani, paying $7,000 per month in cash. The thirty-eight Heaven’s Gate members, plus group leader Applewhite, were found dead in the home on 26 March 1997. In the heat of the California spring, many of the bodies had begun to decompose by the time they were discovered. The corpses underwent autopsies, where cyanide and arsenic were found. The bodies were later cremated.
The suicide was accomplished by ingestion of phenobarbital with vodka. Additionally, plastic bags were secured around their heads after ingesting the mix to induce asphyxiation. Authorities found the dead lying neatly in their own bunk beds, faces and torsos covered by a square, purple cloth. Each member carried a five dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets. All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, black-and-white Nike Decades trainers, and armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team”. Leader Applewhite was the third to last member to die; two women remained after him and were the only ones found without bags over their heads.
One of the group’s members did not kill himself: weeks before the suicides Rio Di Angelo agreed with Applewhite to leave the group so he could ensure future dissemination of Heaven’s Gate videos and literature. He videotaped the mansion in Rancho Santa Fe; however, the tape was not shown to police until 2002, five years after the event.
On this day in 1965 Sarah Jessica Parker was born.
Sarah Jessica Parker was born March 25, 1965, in Nelsonville, Ohio. She has 3 siblings and 4 half siblings.
Sarah Jessica Parker at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival
Trained in singing and ballet, she studied at the American Ballet School and the Professional Children’s School. Sarah was cast in the Broadway production of ‘The Innocents’, which prompted her family to relocate to New Jersey. She was also cast in ‘The Sound of Music’, along with four of her siblings, and landed the lead in the Broadway run of ‘Annie’.
She is arguably most famous for her role as Carrie in the TV show and films ‘Sex and the City‘ which centers on four women in New York and their gossip about sex-lives and being a modern woman in the 90’s America. Sarah Jessica Parker plays a writer for the New York Star with a column with the same title as the show. When she is not writing about her relationships, sex, people, careers, etc. for her column, she is shopping or chatting with her three best friends: Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte.
What would you get Sarah Jessica Parker for her birthday?
On this day in 1981 the Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs was rescued by Barbados police following his kidnapping.
Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs was rescued by Barbados police following his kidnapping. The 52-year-old, who was on the run from UK police, was found on a yacht which had broken down off of the coast of Barbados.
Biggs was taken from a bar in Rio de Janeiro when men turned up and, following a brief chat, bundled Mr Biggs into a waiting car. From there it is believed they took him by plane to the coast where they boarded a yacht bound for Barbados. The kidnap was an attempt to get Biggs extradited to serve the rest of his sentence in the UK. He was on the run since 1965 when he escaped from Wandsworth Prison where he was serving 30 years for his involvement in the Great Train Robbery of 1963.
The men who carried out the kidnap were reported to be members of a security firm headed by Patrick King and John Miller. Asked about the suggestion the whole thing was staged Mr Miller said: “Ronnie Biggs never agreed to come with us. All I want to do now is get the guys out of jail and get them back home. We have no intention of selling the story to the press.”
Britain and Brazil are both fighting to have Ronnie Biggs returned to their shores when he is released from questioning. Former Detective Superintendent Jack Slipper, the man who led the initial hunt for Mr Biggs said: “I would have liked him to come back under his own steam or under some other legal method.”
Following the kidnapping Ronnie Biggs was eventually allowed back to Brazil and after 35 years on the run he returned to the UK voluntarily in 2001. On 30 July 2009, it was claimed by representatives of Biggs that he had been given ‘permission’ to challenge the decision to refuse him parole. However, the Home Office stated only that an application for the early release on compassionate grounds of a prisoner at HMP Norwich had been received by the public protection casework section in the National Offender Management Service. Biggs was released from custody on 6 August, the day before his 80th birthday, on ‘compassionate grounds’.
On this day in 1933 Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany after the Reichstag passed the enabling act.
The Enabling Act was passed by Germany’s Reichstag and signed by President Paul von Hindenburg on 23 March 1933. It was the second major step, after the Reichstag Fire Decree, through which Chancellor Adolf Hitler legally obtained plenary powers and established his dictatorship. It received its name from its legal status as an enabling act granting the Cabinet the authority to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag. The act stated that it was to last for four years unless renewed by the Reichstag, which occurred twice.
Adolf Hitler in 1937
The Reichstag Fire Decree is the common name of the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State issued by von Hindenburg in direct response to the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933. The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions in the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis of imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and to suppress publications not considered “friendly” to the Nazi cause. The decree is considered by historians to be one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany.
Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 and became the leader of the Nazi party in 1921. In 1920 the party had only 60 members, this figure rose substantially to 8.5 million by 1945. He was the Chancellor of Germany from 1933-1945 and was the Dictator of Nazi Germany from 1934-1945.
On this day in 1980 ‘Going underground’ by the jam reached no. 1 for 3 weeks.
The Jam were an English punk rock/new wave/mod revival band active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were formed in Woking, Surrey. While they shared the “angry young men” outlook and fast tempos of their punk rock contemporaries, The Jam wore smartly tailored suits rather than ripped clothes, and they incorporated a number of mainstream 1960s rock influences rather than rejecting them, placing The Jam at the forefront of the mod revival movement.
They had 18 consecutive Top 40 singles in the United Kingdom, from their debut in 1977 to their break-up in December 1982, including four number one hits. As of 2007, “That’s Entertainment” and “Just Who Is the 5 O’Clock Hero?” remained the best-selling import singles of all time in the UK. They released one live album and six studio albums, the last of which, The Gift, hit number one on the UK album charts. When the group split up, their first 15 singles were re-released and all placed within the top 100.
The band’s first single of 1980 was intended to be “Dreams of Children”, which combined bleak lyrics lamenting the loss of childhood optimism with hard-edged, psychedelic instrumental backing and production. Due to a labelling error, however, the a- and b-sides of the single were reversed, resulting in the more conventional “Going Underground”, the single’s planned flipside, getting much more airplay and attention than “Dreams of Children”. As a result, only “Going Underground” was initially listed on the charts, although the single was eventually officially recognised (and listed) as a double A-side by the time the release reached #1 in the UK. When promoting the album in the United States, the group appeared on American Bandstand, performing “(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave”, a cover of the hit song by the Motown girl group Martha and the Vandellas. They also appeared on the short-lived American sketch comedy series Fridays, playing the song “Private Hell”.
Did you know?…
The song was parodied in 2004 by the Amateur Transplants as “London Underground”, a humorous song full of abuse at the London Underground Strike.
On this day in 1963 Alcatraz federal penitentiary prison closed.
Alcatraz Island is an island located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.5 miles offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The small island was developed with facilities for a federal prison until March 21, 1963. In 1972 Alcatraz became a national recreation area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
Alcatraz Island
Today, the island’s facilities are operated by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area; it is open to tours. Visitors can reach the island by ferry ride from Pier 33, near Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
The United States Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz was acquired by the United States Department of Justice on October 12, 1933, and the island became a Federal Bureau of Prisons federal prison in August 1934. During the 29 years it was in use, the jail held such notable criminals as Al Capone, Robert Franklin Stroud and George “Machine Gun” Kelly. It also provided housing for the Bureau of Prisons staff and their families.
During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed no prisoner had successfully escaped. A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, and three escaped and were never found.
On June 11, 1962, Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin carried out one of the most intricate escapes ever devised. Behind the prisoners’ cells in Cell Block B was an unguarded 3-foot wide utility corridor. The prisoners chiseled away the moisture-damaged concrete from around an air vent leading to this corridor, using tools such as a metal spoon soldered with silver from a dime and an electric drill improvised from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor. The noise was disguised by accordions played during music hour, and the progress was concealed by false walls which, in the dark recesses of the cells, fooled the guards.
The escape route led up through a fan vent; the prisoners removed the fan and motor, replacing them with a steel grille and leaving a shaft large enough for a prisoner to enter. The escapees also constructed an inflatable raft from several stolen rain coats for the trip to the mainland. They escaped, leaving papier-mâché dummies in their cells affixed with stolen human hair from the barbershop.
The official investigation by the FBI was aided by another prisoner, Allen West, who was part of the escapees’ group but was left behind. Articles belonging to the prisoners (including plywood paddles and parts of the raincoat raft) were discovered on nearby Angel Island. The official report on the escape says the prisoners drowned while trying to reach the mainland in the cold waters of the bay.
The attempt was the subject of the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz with screenplay by Richard Tuggle, directed by Don Siegel, and starring Clint Eastwood as Frank Morris, Jack Thibeau as Clarence Anglin, and Fred Ward as John Anglin. The film implied that the three made it.
The escape was examined in a 2011 National Geographic Channel program entitled “Vanished from Alcatraz.” According to the newly uncovered official records discussed on the program, a raft was discovered on Angel Island with footprints leading away from it. There was also a report of a car stolen in the area that night. As a result, the U.S. Marshals office is still investigating this case, which will remain open on all three escapees until their 100th birthdays.
Robert Stroud, who was better known to the public as the “Birdman of Alcatraz”, was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. He spent seventeen years in segregation in D Block and eleven years in the prison hospital. In 1959 he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. Although called the “Birdman of Alcatraz”, Stroud was not allowed to keep birds while incarcerated there.
Al Capone arrived on Alcatraz in 1934. Capone generated incredible media attention while on Alcatraz though he served just four and a half years of his sentence there before developing symptoms of tertiary syphilis and being transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in Los Angeles.
George “Machine Gun” Kelly arrived on September 4, 1934. At Alcatraz, Kelly was constantly boasting about several robberies and murders that he had never committed. Kelly was returned to Leavenworth in 1951.
Alvin “Creepy Karpis” Karpowicz arrived in 1936. He constantly fought with other inmates. He spent the longest time on Alcatraz island, serving nearly 26 years.
Ellsworth Raymond “Bumpy” Johnson, the Godfather of Harlem, was a gangster in Harlem in the early 20th century. He was sent to Alcatraz in 1954 and was imprisoned until 1963. He was believed to have been involved in the 1962 escape attempt of Frank Morris, John and Clarence Anglin.
Mickey Cohen worked for the Mafia’s gambling rackets; he was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 15 years in Alcatraz Island. Two years into his sentence, an inmate clobbered Cohen with a lead pipe, partially paralysing him. After his release in 1972, Cohen led a quiet life with old friends.
Arthur R. “Doc” Barker the son of Ma Barker and a member of the Barker-Karpis gang along with Alvin Karpis. In 1935, Barker was sent to Alcatraz Island on conspiracy to kidnap charges. On the night of January 13, 1939, Barker with Henri Young and Rufus McCain attempted escape from Alcatraz. Barker was shot and killed by the guards.
Rafael Cancel Miranda, a member of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, who attacked the United States Capitol building in 1954. On March 1, 1954, Cancel Miranda together with fellow Nationalists entered the United States Capitol building armed with automatic pistols and fired 30 shots, hitting five congressmen, who all survived their wounds.
Because the penitentiary cost much more to operate than other prisons and half a century of salt water saturation had severely eroded the buildings, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the penitentiary closed on March 21, 1963. That year, the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, on land, opened as the replacement facility for Alcatraz.
Fox Channel has been running a new TV series based on the mysterious prison island centered on the idea that some prisoners and guards disappeared and are now returning. In 1963, all the prisoners and guards mysteriously disappear from Alcatraz. In the present day, they resurface and a secret agency are tasked with re-capturing them.
On this day... 