November 4, 2010

Born on this date
Happy Birthday, Guillermina Ramirez Morales!

270 years ago
1740

Born on this date
Augustus Toplady. U.K. clergyman and hymnist. Rev. Toplady was an Anglican minister who was the most prominent Calvinist opponent of John Wesley within the Church of England. He's best known today as the author of the hymn Rock of Ages (1763). Rev. Toplady died of tuberculosis on August 11, 1778 at the age of 37.

230 years ago
1780

World events
The Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II against Spanish rule in the Viceroyalty of Peru began, as he and his supporters seized Antonio Arriaga, the corregidor of his hometown of Tinta.

170 years ago
1840

Born on this date
William Giblin. Australian politician. Mr. Giblin was Premier of Tasmania from March-December 1878 and 1879-1884. He died on January 17, 1887 at the age of 46.

120 years ago
1890

Politics and government
Elections for the U.S. House of Representatives resulted in huge gains for the Democratic Party and huge losses for the Republican Party. The Democrats won 238 of 332 seats, an increase of 86 from their total in the most recent election in 1888. The Republicans lost 93 seats, dropping from 179 to 86. The Populist Party, which held no seats going into the election, won 8 seats. The Tariff Act framed by Rep. William McKinley (Republican--Ohio) and the Panic of 1890 were cited as reasons for widespread opposition to the Republicans. Dates for elections to the Senate varied from state to state.

Transportation
London's first deep-level tube railway, the City and South London Railway, opened between King William Street and Stockwell.

80 years ago
1930

Died on this date
Akiyama Yoshifuru, 71. Japanese military officer. General Akiyama began his service with the Imperial Japanese Army in the late 1870s. He served in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), and is considered the father of modern Japanese cavalry. Gen. Akiyama died of complications from diabetes.

Politics and government
Just over a year after the stock market crash had led to the onset of the Depression, the Democratic Party made gains in U.S. mid-term elections, but the Republican Party barely maintained control of both houses of Congress. The Democrats gained 8 seats in the Senate while the Republicans lost 8, leaving the Republicans with a 48-47 lead, with the other seat held by Henrik Shipsted (Farmer-Labor) of Minnesota, who was not up for re-election. Any tie in the upper house could be broken in favour of the Republicans, with Vice President Charles Curtis able to cast the deciding vote. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats gained 52 seats, the Republicans lost 52, and Farmer-Labor retained its only seat, leaving the Republicans with 218 and the Democrats with 216. In gubernatorial elections, 33 state governorships were up for election. The Democrats gained 7 to increase their total to 25; the Republicans lost 9 to drop to 21; Farmer-Labor candidate Floyd Olson was elected in Minnesota; and independent Julius Meier was elected in Oregon.

70 years ago
1940

Died on this date
Arthur Rostron, 71. U.K. mariner. Sir Arthur was an officer for the Cunard Line who was best known as captain of RMS Carpathia when it rescued hundreds of survivors of RMS Titanic when it sank off Newfoundland in the early hours of April 15, 1912. He was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by the U.S. Congress, was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1926, and became Commodore of the Cunard Fleet, retiring in 1931.

Richard von Heynitz. German diplomat. Mr. Heynitz, German charge d'affaires to El Salvador, was found dead in San Salvador with a bullet in his right temple. Authorities believed the death to be a suicide.

War
The Vichy government in France reportedly informed the United States that France would not go to war against Britain, give up her fleet to Germany, or yield her West Indian colonies. According to reports from Hong Kong, the Chinese province of Kwangsi had been totally abandoned and Chinese troops were said to be approaching Yangchow, the port in the province of Kwantung through which the Japanese troops in Kwangsi were being supplied.

Defense
Five United States Army and civil technicians arrived in Hamilton, Bermuda to survey sites for American naval and air bases.

Politics and government
A U.S. federal grand jury investigating the election campaign in the Philadelphia area subpoenaed the records of 20 banks. Republican Party U.S. presidential candidate Wendell Willkie declared in a New York radio broadcast to "the women of America" that as President he would keep the United States out of foreign wars.

60 years ago
1950

Hit parade
#1 single in Australia (Kent Music Report): Hollywood Square Dance--Sammy Kaye and his "Swing and Sway" Orchestra

#1 single in the U.S.A. (Billboard): Goodnight Irene--Gordon Jenkins and his Orchestra and the Weavers (Best Seller--12th week at #1; Jukebox--11th week at #1); All My Love (Bolero)--Patti Page (Disc Jockey--2nd week at #1)

U.S.A. Top 10 (Cash Box)
1 Goodnight Irene--Gordon Jenkins and his Orchestra and the Weavers (10th week at #1)
--Frank Sinatra
2 Harbor Lights--Sammy Kaye and his "Swing and Sway" Orchestra with Tony Alamo and the Kaydets
--Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians
--Ray Anthony and his Orchestra
--Bing Crosby
3 All My Love (Bolero)--Patti Page
--Percy Faith and his Orchestra
--Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians
--Bing Crosby
4 Mona Lisa--Nat King Cole
--Victor Young and his Orchestra (Don Cherry, vocal)
--Art Lund
5 Can Anyone Explain? (No, No, No!)--The Ames Brothers
6 La Vie en Rose--Tony Martin
--Bing Crosby
--Edith Piaf
7 Our Lady of Fatima--Richard Hayes and Kitty Kallen
--Red Foley
8 Sam’s Song--Gary Crosby and Friend
--Joe "Fingers" Carr and the Carr-Hops
9 Thinking of You--Don Cherry
--Eddie Fisher
10 I’ll Never Be Free--Kay Starr and Tennessee Ernie

Singles entering the chart were Ain’t Nobody’s Business But My Own by Kay Starr and Tennessee Ernie (#32); Beyond the Reef by Bing Crosby (#34); A Rainy Day Refrain by Mindy Carson (#38); and Do I Worry? by Russ Morgan and his Orchestra (#39). Ain’t Nobody’s Business But My Own was the B-side of I’ll Never Be Free. Beyond the Reef was the B-side of Harbor Lights.

Died on this date
Grover Cleveland Alexander, 63. U.S. baseball pitcher. "Old Pete" played with the Philadelphia Phillies (1911-1917, 1930); Chicago Cubs (1918-1926); and St. Louis Cardinals (1926-1929), compiling a record of 373-208 with an earned run average of 2.08 in 696 games, batting .209 with 11 home runs and 163 runs batted in in 703 games. He led or tied for the National League lead in wins six times; ERA five times; complete games six times; strikeouts six times; shutouts seven times; and several other categories at least once, leading the NL in wins, ERA, and strikeouts in the same season in 1915, 1916, and 1920. Mr. Alexander's career win total is tied with Christy Mathewson for the NL record. He served with the U.S. Army in World War I, where he was exposed to mustard gas and suffered shell shock which left him deaf in his left ear; his wartime experiences brought on epilepsy, which in turn exacerbated a drinking problem the affected him the rest of his life. Mr. Alexander helped the Phillies win their first National League pennant in 1915, but was best known for helping the Cardinals defeat the New York Yankees in seven games in the 1926 World Series. He pitched complete game victories in the second and sixth games, and was brought into the seventh game with the bases loaded and 2 out in the 7th inning. Mr. Alexander struck out Tony Lazzeri to end the inning, and pitched 2 scoreless innings to earn the save as the Cardinals won their first World Series championship. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938, but fell on hard times in later years. Mr. Alexander died of heart failure; he was the subject of the heavily-fictionalized movie The Winning Team (1952), starring Ronald Reagan.

Football
CRU
IRFU
Hamilton (7-5) 11 @ Ottawa (4-7-1) 3
Montreal (6-6) 18 @ Toronto (6-5-1) 17

10,502 fans at Lansdowne Park saw the Tiger-Cats defeat the Rough Riders. 11,000 fans at Varsity Stadium went home disappointed when the defending Grey Cup champion Alouettes, who didn't qualify for the playoffs in 1950, prevented the Argonauts from finishing in first place.

WIFU
Finals
Winnipeg 16 @ Edmonton 17 (Edmonton led best-of-three series 1-0)

Mike King, Bob Paffrath, and Rollin Prather scored touchdowns for the Eskimos; Annis Stukus converted 2 of the 3. Mr. Prather’s touchdown came on a pass from Lindy Berry with less than 4 minutes remaining in the game; Mr. Stukus’s convert provided the winning margin in the first western playoff game to be played at night. 14,900 attended the game at Clarke Stadium--the largest crowd to attend a game in western Canada to that time.

50 years ago
1960

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.K. (New Musical Express): It's Now or Never--Elvis Presley

On television tonight
The Twilight Zone, on CBS
Tonight’s episode: The Howling Man, starring John Carradine and H.M. Wynant

Crime
Canadian Justice Minister Davie Fulton announced a 15-year rehabilitation program for prisoners in federal penitentiaries.

AFL
Oakland (4-5) 28 @ Boston (3-5) 34
New York (4-5) 7 @ Los Angeles (5-3) 21

40 years ago
1970

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.K. (New Musical Express): Woodstock--Matthews Southern Comfort

War
The United States turned over control of the air base at Bình Thủy in the Mekong Delta to South Vietnam.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted an Egyptian-backed resolution calling for a three-month extension of the Middle East cease-fire and for the unconditional resumption of Arab-Israeli peace talks. Israel and the United States opposed the resolution because it did not consider reported violations of the cease-fire by Egypt.

World events
Authorities in California discovered a 13-year-old feral child known as Genie, who had spent almost her entire life in social isolation.

30 years ago
1980

Died on this date
Elsie MacGill, 75. Canadian-born engineer. Ms. MacGill, a native of Vancouver, became the first woman in Canada to earn a degree in electrical engineering (University of Toronto, 1927), and the first woman in the world to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering (University of Michigan, 1929). She worked with Canadian Car and Foundry (CC&F) in Fort William, Ontario during World War II, and became known as "Queen of the Hurricanes" for supervising the production of Hawker Hurricanes for the Royal Air Force. Ms. MacGill served on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (1967-1970), co-authoring its final report. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts after a short illness.

Politics and government
In the U.S. presidential election, former California Governor Ronald Reagan, running as the Republican party nominee, defeated President Jimmy Carter, the Democratic party candidate, with 489 electoral votes to 49. The popular vote was much closer, with Mr. reagan taking 43.9 million votes (50.7%) to 35.5 million (41.0 %) for Mr. Carter; 5.7 million (6.6%) for independent candidate John Anderson; and 921,188 (1.1%) for Libertarian party candidate Ed Clark. The conservative tide also extended to the Senate, as liberal Democratic veterans such as George McGovern (South Dakota), Birch Bayh (Indiana), and Frank Church (Idaho) going down to defeat before Republican challengers.



Terrorism
Exactly one year after Iranian militants had seized the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran announced new conditions for the release of the hostages and urged the United States to reply through the mass media to their offer. The four main Iranian demands were promises by the U.S. not to interfere in Iranian affairs; to unfreeze Iranian assets in the U.S.; to drop financial claims made against Iran; and to move to return the wealth of the Late Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi. The U.S. State Department noted that Iran’s conditions required careful analysis and an answer would therefore take time.

25 years ago
1985

Diplomacy
U.S.S.R. President Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz met in Moscow for two days of talks, two weeks prior to the summit in Geneva between Mr. Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Vitaly Yurchenko, deputy chief of the Soviet intelligence agency KGB’s North American desk, who had defected to the United States earlier in the year, appeared at a news conference at the Soviet embassy in Washington and charged that he had been kidnapped and drugged by the CIA, and then held prisoner and interrogated. The claim was rejected by knowledgeable people, but U.S. government leaders were sharply divided over whether Mr. Yurchenko had been a genuine defector who had changed his mind or whether he had been a Soviet plant from the beginning.

Terrorism
Italian Premier Bettino Craxi condemned the use of a NATO military base in Sicily as the site of a forced landing by the United States of an Egyptian plane carrying the Palestinian terrorists who had seized the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in October.

Politics and government
Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos said that he favoured January 17, 1986 as the date for a new presidential election instead of the scheduled 1987 vote, as he intended to pre-empt Communist opposition.

20 years ago
1990

Hit parade
#1 single in New Zealand (RIANZ): To Sir with Love--Ngaire (2nd week at #1)

#1 single in Switzerland: I've Been Thinking About You--Londonbeat

Austria's Top 10 (Ö3)
1 Tom's Diner--DNA featuring Suzanne Vega (5th week at #1)
2 Ich hab' geträumt von dir--Matthias Reim
3 I've Been Thinking About You--Londonbeat
4 Cult of Snap--Snap!
5 Blaze of Glory--Jon Bon Jovi
6 Naked in the Rain--Black Pearl
7 It's on You--M.C. Sar & the Real McCoy
8 I am from Austria--Rainhard Fendrich
9 La luna lila (Purple Moon)--Luisa Fernandez & Peter Kent
10 Close to You--Maxi Priest

Singles entering the chart were So Hard by Pet Shop Boys (#24); and We Love to Love by P.M. Sampson & Double Key (#25).

Politics and government
Jean Doré was re-elected Mayor of Montréal, taking more than 59% of the vote. His closest challenger, Nicole Gagnon-Larocque, received 20.72% of the vote.

Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offered an apology to Canadians of Italian origin who had been forced to live in internment camps during World War II. He had earlier offered an apology to Japanese-Canadians.

Football
CFL
Hamilton (6-12) 15 @ Winnipeg (12-6) 32
Edmonton (10-8) 32 @ Calgary (11-6-1) 34

The wind at Winnipeg Stadium was a major influence as the Blue Bombers defeated the Tiger-Cats before 26,528 fans. Winnipeg’s Trevor Kennerd kicked 6 field goals in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, while the Blue Bombers had the wind behind them. Paul Osbaldiston’s 5 field goals, 4 of them in the 1st and 4th quarters when the Tiger-Cats had the wind at their backs, accounted for the Hamilton scoring. One of Mr. Osbaldiston’s field goals was from 57 yards. Eric Streater, who led all receivers with 123 yards on 7 receptions, scored Winnipeg touchdowns on passes of 11 yards in the 1st quarter and 24 yards in the 4th on passes from Tom Burgess. Hamilton quarterbacks Mike Kerrigan and Todd Dillon completed just 14 of 40 passes for 160 yards, and the Tiger-Cats managed just 12 first downs and 197 yards net offense. CFL rushing leader Robert Mimbs led the Blue Bombers with 75 yards on 17 carries. Michael Vaughn, playing his only CFL game, led the Tiger-Cats with 7 carries for 28 yards, and caught 1 pass for 3 yards.

The Stampeders withstood a late rally to defeat the Eskimos and finish in first place in the Western Division for the first time in 19 years. Calgary quarterback Danny Barrett completed 16 of 28 passes for 344 yards and touchdowns of 34 yards to Allen Pitts and 36 yards to Derrick Crawford. Andy McVey and Tony Cherry rushed for Calgary touchdowns. Mark McLoughlin added 4 converts, a field goal, and 3 singles. Tracy Ham started at quarterback for the Eskimos, but completed just 10 of 22 passes for 133 yards, although he managed 67 yards on 8 rushes. Blake Marshall rushed 1 yard for an Edmonton touchdown in the 2nd quarter, converted by Ray Macoritti, who also kicked a field goal and 2 singles. The Stampeders led 34-12 in the 4th quarter when Steve Taylor, who had relieved Mr. Ham, completed a 5-yard touchdown pass to Michael Soles, converted by Mr. Macoritti. With just 2:33 remaining in regulation time, Mr. Taylor completed a 6-yard touchdown pass to Brian Walling; a 2-point convert was unsuccessful, leaving the Stampeders ahead 34-25. The Eskimos stopped the Stampeders and got the ball back, and Mr. Taylor rushed 26 yards for his first CFL touchdown with 1:15 remaining. Mr. Macoritti converted, but the Eskimos were unable to get possession of the ball afterward. Attendance at McMahon Stadium was 26,676, which included this blogger and Canadian Senator Stan Waters.

10 years ago
2000

Football
CFL
Saskatchewan (5-12-1) 26 @ British Columbia (8-10-0-1) 27

Lui Passaglia, playing the last regular season game of his 25-year CFL career, was sent in to play quarterback with the ball on the Saskatchewan 1-yard line, and sneaked over for his second career touchdown with 2:47 remaining in regulation time. His convert provided the winning margin as Saskatchewan’s Paul McCallum, one of several kickers once employed by the Lions as Mr. Passaglia’s heir-apparent, missed a 37-yard field goal, which went for a single point with 1:23 remaining. Mr. Passaglia’s only other touchdown had come against the Roughriders at Vancouver’s Empire Stadium in his first CFL game on July 22, 1976. In addition to his touchdown and winning convert, Mr. Passaglia added 2 field goals and converted touchdowns 2 touchdowns by Alfred Jackson. Mr. Jackson, who had 147 yards on 6 receptions, scored on a 55-yard pass from Damon Allen in the 1st quarter and on a 20-yard pass from Doug Nussmeier in the 3rd quarter. Saskatchewan quarterback Marvin Graves completed touchdown passes of 11 yards in the 2nd quarter and 18 yards in the 4th quarter to Eric Guliford. Darren Davis, who led all rushers with 114 yards on 17 carries, ran 1 yard for a Roughrider touchdown in the 1st quarter. Mr. McCallum converted all 3 and added 2 singles, including the one he had late in the game. Curtis Marsh led Saskatchewan’s receivers with 8 catches for 117 yards. Attendance at B.C. Place Stadium in Vancouver was 33,232.