But Rodgers had been a successful composer long before his work with Hammerstein. In 1919 at the age of 16 me met Lorenz Hart when they worked together to write songs for an amateur club show. Their first broadway show opened on May 17, 1925 at the Garrick Theatre. The show was called the Garrick Gaieties.

Lorenz Hart was born in 1895 to a Jewish German immigrant family in Harlem, New York. To nearly all, but his mother, he was called Larry.

When the motion pictures began to talk in the late 20′s, many broadway performers and writers went to Hollywood. The song writing team of Rodgers and Hart were included in those ranks. It was in Hollywood in 1934 that they wrote Blue Moon.

By 1935, the team was brought back to Broadway by Billy Rose to write the the songs for his production, Jumbo. Between 1936 and 1943 the team worked on 8 musicals among them Babe in Arms and Pal Joey.

The final collaboration between Rodgers and Hart was the revival of their A Connecticut Yankee. The show included six new songs by the team and opened on November 17, 1943. By this time Rodgers had already began working with Hammerstein. Hart had been ill while they worked on the project. He developed pneumonia and died on November 22, 1943.

Olga Korbut was born on May 16, 1955. She began her training at the age of 8 and at 11 enter a sports school headed by former Olympian Renald Knysh.

In 1972 many of Gymnastic Athletics were older then the 17 year old Korbut. Her success, especially with her acrobatic routines on the uneven parallel bars and balance beam, caused a change in the sport. There was a focus prior to 1972 on elegance, afterwards it was more focused on athleticism.

In 1972 she won 3 Gold metals, the team Gold and two individual Gold in Balance Beam and Floor Exercise. Amazingly she finished only with the Silver for the Uneven Bars, it was her performance on the Uneven Bars during the team competition that wowed those in attendance and watching on TV. She missed the mount on the bars and this caused her to fall to second.

She returned to the 1976 games and again won a Gold metal for Team competition and a Silver in the Balance beam. The 1976 games had Nadia Comeneci as the darling of Gymnastics.

He was wounded by friendly fire. One the moon lite evening of May 2nd he rode out onto the plank road to determine the feasibility of a night attack. As hhe and his staff was returning they were incorrectly identified as Union cavalry by men of the Second Corps who opened fire. The wound itself was not life-threatening although his arm was amputated

Jackson, who had gained the nickname Stonewall at the First Battle of Bull Run, is considered one of the most gifted tactical commanders in United States history. General Robert E. Lee considered the lost of Jackson to be just like losing his right arm.

Thomas Jackson was the third child of Julia Beckwith (née Neale) Jackson (1798 – 1831) and Jonathan Jackson (1790 – 1826). Both of Jackson’s parents were natives of Virginia and were living in Clarksburg, in what is now West Virginia. He was named for his maternal grandfather.

Jackson was appointed to the United States Military Academy in the summer of 1842, at the age of eighteen years old. His appointment came due to another cadet, Gibson Butcher, who had resigned after one day of service. Jackson replaced him in the class. Four years later on June 30, 1846 he left as a commissioned Brevet Second Lieutenant.

He was 17th in his class of 59. Included in the class was Union General George B. McClellan, who was 2nd, and Confederate Generals Ambrose Powell (A.P.) Hill and George Edward Pickett, who was last. In all the class had 20 men who became Generals with 19 of them serving in the Civil War, 10 on the Union side and 9 for the Confederates.

On November 10, 1939, three days after his eighteenth birthday he enlisted in the United States Army. One of his first assignments was with the air corps (it later became the US Air Force) and was shipped to Hickman field in Hawaii. In 1940 he transferred to 27th Infantry, which was at Schofield Barracks, also located in Hawaii. He was at Schofield when Japan attacked in December 7, 1941.

He left Hawaii on December 6, 1942 to be stationed on Guadalcanal. He was there during the Japanese attack and from those experiences he wrote The Thin Red Line. To many it is the best book about WWII.

Even before the war he had dreams of being a writer. After the war he was able to work with Maxwell Perkins, Thomas Wolfe’s editor. Jones admired the work of Wolfe. He first novel was From Here to Eternity, based on his experiences in Hawaii prior to the attack of December 7, 1941. It was published in 1951 and made into a movie in 1953. The movie won Best Picture Oscar.

Jones went on to complete what he called his WWII trilogy with The Thin Red Line in 1961 and Whistle in 1978. The central characters are actually the same in all three books, though their names were somewhat altered. From Here to Eternity features Warden and Prewitt, who become Welsh and Witt in The Thin Red Line and Mart Winch and Bobby Prell in Whistle. Similarly, Corporal Fife in The Thin Red Line reappears as Marion Landers in Whistle, as does the cook, Storm, who becomes Johnny “Mother” Strange.

While working to finish Whistle, Jones died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 1977. Knowing that he had little time remaining, but wanting to finish the novel at times he worked 14 hours a day on it. When he died he had completed all but the final three chapters. Those chapters were completed by Willie Morris based on notes and taped conversation that Jones had already written.

Tammi Terrell was born on April 29, 1945 in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Her birth name was Thomasina Winifred Montgomery. By the time she was 13 she was performing live and signed with Scepter Records in 1961 using the name Tammy Montgomery.

Between 1961 and 1964 she recorded songs for three different labels. Scepter Records, where she was first signed, Try Me Records, which was owned by James Brown and Checker Records. Berry Gordy signed her to his Motown label in 1965.

After a pair of singles that were only of moderate success, Motown teamed her with Marvin Gaye. She recorded as a duo with him singing songs composed by the husband and wife team of Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson.

On October 14, 1967 just as the team of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell were reaching the top of the charts and recording their second album, Tammi Terrell collapsed during a concert at Hamden-Sydney College in Virginia. Shortly afterward she would be diagnosed with the brain tumor that would take her life a few years later on March 16, 1970.

In all the duo would release three albums. Some of the songs on the albums were songs that Terrell recorded as a solo act and the Gaye vocals were overdubbed at a later time. It is even rumored that Valerie Simpson recorded many of the vocals credited to Tammi Terrell on the duo’s third and final album Easy.

On May 10, 1941 he left Germany suddenly for Scotland. His intention was to negotiate peace with the British a country in which he was not completely in favor of being in War.

Instead he was captured and imprison. Hess was declared insane by a bewildered Hitler, and effectively disowned by the Nazis.

He was tried at Nuremberg and in spite of his mental condition was sentenced to life in prison. He committed suicide on August 17, 1987 at age 92, the last of the prisoners tried at Nuremberg.

Although there are some who don’t believe he committed suicide. He was discovered with an electrical cord wrapped around his neck in a secure area of Spandau Prison. He also had severe arthritis in his fingers and needed assistance for small things such as tying his shoes.

Spandau Prison was constructed in 1876. After the end of World War II it was used to house the seven Nazi war criminals sentenced to imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials. After the death of Hess it was demolished in 1987 in part to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.