March 6, 2013

225 years ago
1788

Australiana
The First Fleet arrived at Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement.

125 years ago
1888

Died on this date
Louisa May Alcott, 55. U.S. authoress. Miss Alcott was best known for the novel Little Women (1868). She died of a stroke after years of declining health, and just two days after the death of her father Amos Bronson Alcott.

100 years ago
1913

War
In the First Balkan War, Greek forces captured the city of Ioannina in Greece's Yanya province from Turkish forces to successfuly conclude the Battle of Bizani.

90 years ago
1923

Swimming
Johnny Weissmuller of the Illinois Athletic Club covered the 440-metre freestyle in 4 minutes and 58 seconds in New Haven, Connecticut, breaking his own world record by 11 seconds and becoming the first person to complete the event in less than 5 minutes. It was the 47th time that Mr. Weissmuller had set a world record.

80 years ago
1933

Died on this date
Anton Cermak, 59. Austria-Hungarian born U.S. politician. Mr. Cermak, the mayor of Chicago since 1931, died 19 days after being shot while standing near President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami. His personal physician, Dr. Karl Meyer, said that Mr. Cermak had recovered from his wound, but that he had died from complications caused by ulcerative colitis. The shooter, Giuseppe Zangara, was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison on March 20 after spending just 10 days on death row.

70 years ago
1943

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.S.A. (Billboard): I've Heard That Song Before--Harry James and his Music Makers with Helen Forrest

60 years ago
1953

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.K. (New Musical Express): Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes--Perry Como (5th week at #1)

On television tonight
Tales of Tomorrow, on ABC
Tonight's episode: The Fury of the Cocoon, starring Nancy Coleman, Peter Capell, and Cameron Prud'Homme



Politics and government
The day after the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Georgi Malenkov was named to succeed him as Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

50 years ago
1963

At the movies
Papa's Delicate Condition, directed by George Marshall, and starring Jackie Gleason, Charlie Ruggles, Laurel Goodwin, and Linda Bruhl, opened in theatres.



Music
Roy Orbison performed at the Polish Hall in Edmonton. Tickets cost $1.50.

40 years ago
1973

Died on this date
Pearl S. Buck, 80. U.S. author. Miss Buck, who spent much of her life in China, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1932 for her novel The Good Earth, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.

Oil
U.S. President Richard Nixon reimposed mandatory price controls on the nation's 23 largest oil companies, limiting average price increases without government approval to 1% for crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, and other refinery products during the first year of Phase III of Mr. Nixon's economic program. No limit was placed on price ncreases for a single product, thus making possible a sharp rise in gasl=oline prices alone.

30 years ago
1983

On the radio
Stories of Sherlock Holmes, on Springbok Radio
Tonight's episode: The Young Visitor

Died on this date
Donald MacLean, 69. U.K. diplomat and traitor. Mr. MacLean, son of a former leader of the British Liberal Party, was one of the Cambridge Five--Cambridge University students who were recruited as Soviet spies, and then entered the British diplomatic service upon graduation. Mr. MacLean has been blamed for contributing to the 1948 Soviet blockade of Berlin and the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. Along with fellow Cambridge traitor Guy Burgess, Mr. MacLean fled the United Kingdom on May 25, 1951, three days before he was to be interrogated by MI5 about his activities. He made his way to Moscow, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Politics and government
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl retained his office as his centre-right coalition of his own Christian Democratic party, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, and the Free Democrats, won about 55% of the vote and 278 of 498 seats in the Bundestag election. The rival Social Democratic party, headed by Hans-Jochen Vogel, received 38% of the vote and 193 seats, a decline from the previous election. World attention was focused on the debate over planned deployment of new missiles by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Mr. Kohl favoured deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles if disarmament talks in Geneva failed to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Mr. Vogel held out the possibility of rejecting the missiles. A new party, the Green party, which opposed the missiles and campaigned on environmental issues, took 6% of the vote and 27 seats. The West German economy was also a major election issue. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and other American leaders expressed delight at the outcome of the election.

Football
USFL
Boston (0-1) 17 @ Tampa Bay (1-0) 21





Chicago (1-0) 28 @ Washington (0-1) 7



Oakland (1-0) 24 @ Arizona (0-1) 0



Philadelphia (1-0) 13 @ Denver (0-1) 7



New Jersey (0-1) 15 @ Los Angeles (1-0) 20

The United States Football League, another professional league that was going to put the Canadian Football League out of business (I've seen a few come and go in my time), and the first professional football league to play its games in the spring, began play. In the game that was telecast on ABC on the west coast, the hometown Los Angeles Express, coached by Hugh Campbell (who was just coming off five straight Grey Cup wins with the Edmonton Eskimos) defeated the New Jersey Generals (owned by Donald Trump) at a mostly-empty Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. University of Georgia alumnus Herschel Walker, making his professional debut for the Generals, was held to 65 yards rushing, and was outplayed by Express running back Tony Boddie. The game served as an example of why the USFL quickly became known as the "US Awful." The telecast dragged on for about 3½ hours, with much of the slow pace resulting from delays by the officials, who took forever to decide on their calls. The calibre of play wasn't much better than that of the officiating.



25 years ago
1988

Hit parade
#1 single in New Zealand (RIANZ): Heaven is a Place on Earth--Belinda Carlisle (2nd week at #1)

War
U.S. reconnaissance helicopters were fired on from Iranian boats and an oil platform, while an Iranian mob attacked the Soviet embassy in Tehran.

Terrorism
In the conclusion of Operation Flavius, U.K. Special Air Service forces killed three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers in Gibraltar in order to prevent an IRA bomb attack.

20 years ago
1993

Hit parade
#1 single in Australia (ARIA): You Don't Treat Me No Good--Sonia Dada (2nd week at #1)

#1 single in Italy: Mistero--Enrico Ruggeri

#1 single in Spain (PROMUSICAE): No Limit--2 Unlimited

#1 single in Flanders (VRT): It's OK, All Right--Def Dames Dope

#1 single in France (SNEP): I Will Always Love You--Whitney Houston (6th week at #1)

#1 single in the Netherlands (De Nederlandse Top 40): No Limit--2 Unlimited

#1 single in the U.K. (Chart Information Network): No Limit--2 Unlimited (4th week at #1)

#1 single in the U.S.A. (Billboard): A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)--Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle

#1 single in the U.S.A. (Cash Box): I Will Always Love You--Whitney Houston (14th week at #1)

Canada's Top 10 (RPM)
1 Ordinary World--Duran Duran
2 Bed of Roses--Bon Jovi
3 No Mistakes--Patty Smyth
4 I'm Every Woman--Whitney Houston
5 Man on the Moon--R.E.M.
6 Steam--Peter Gabriel
7 Little Bird--Annie Lennox
8 If I Ever Lose My Faith in You--Sting
9 A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)--Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle
10 Harvest Moon--Neil Young

Singles entering the chart were Lost in Your Eyes by the Jeff Healey Band (#80); Here We Go Again by Portrait (#83); Passionate Kisses by Mary Chapin Carpenter (#84); You Don't Get Away (That Easy) by 54-40 (#87); Water from the Moon by Celine Dion (#90); and Kiss of Life by Sade (#91).

War
More than 350 people were killed in a battle between Unita rebels and the Angolan government in the city of Huambo.