Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King.

King received a B.A. in sociology from Morehouse College, and a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston College in 1955.

King began his work in equal rights after learning of the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 for her failure to give up her bus seat to a white man. He founded the Southern Christian leadership Conference in 1957. The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. His most famous speech was given during the Civil Rights March, formally called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in 1963. The words, ‘I have a dream’ will be remembered from the speech.

King was assassinated on April 14, 1968 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was in Memphis to deliver a speech in support of black garbage workers who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. The assassination led to riots in more than 60 US cities.

Two months after the murder of King, James Earl Ray was captured at London Heathrow airport. Ray confessed to the murder during interrogation in Memphis, although he recanted the confession 3 days later. Under the advice of his attorney he plead guilty to avoid a trail conviction and a possible death penalty. In later times the family of King has their doubts that Ray was the assassin. Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998 from complications related to kidney disease.

In 1986, a federal holiday established in his name was observed for the first time. President Reagan signed the law in 1983 creating the holiday to be observed on the third Monday in January.

Gathering of the Tribes

On January 14, 1967 20 to 30 thousand people came together at Golden State Park in San Francisco for the Human Be-In. It has unofficially become known as the prelude to the Summer of Love.

It was first announced on the cover of the San Francisco Oracle first Issue as “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In.”

Timothy Leary, one of the featured speakers, made his first appearance in San Francisco at the rally where he cried out the phrase”Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”. Others to speak were Poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lew Welch, and Lenore Kandel.

Music was also featured from Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. These bands have come to be best known as the psychedelic sounds of San Francisco of the late 1960′s.

Allen Cohen one of the organizers characterized the event as a necessary meeting-of-the-minds. At the time there was two philosphically opposed factions of the late 1966 San Francisco-based counter culture. On one side were the Berkeley radicals, who were tending toward increased militancy towards the policies of the Vietnam war, and then there was the Haight-Ashbury hippies, who leaned towards peaceful protest and ongoing joyful celebration through peace and love.

After this everything seemed to want to be IN and helped to give the name to the popular comedy Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in.

Sophie Tucker – Last of the Red Hot Mommas

Sophie Tucker, billed later in her career as the Last of the Red Hot Mommas, was born Sophie Kalish in Russia as her parents were immigrating to the United States on January 13, 1884. Her father decided to adopt the name Abuza in America.

One could say she was destined to become an entertainer. While working at the diner her parents owned and operated, she sang songs for those she waited on earning applause and tips.

After separating from her first husband, Louis Tuck, she found herself on the vaudeville stage. She performed songs wearing blackface and with a southern accent until one day when he suitcase arrived late she went on stage declaring to the audience, “You all can see I’m a white girl. Well, I’ll tell you something more: I’m not Southern. I’m a Jewish girl and I just learned this Southern accent doing a blackface act for two years. And now, Mr. Leader, please play my song.”

Still she enjoyed singing songs that had African-American roots. Many of these songs, including her signature song Some of These Days written by Shelton Brooks, she purchased exclusive rights to sing.

Tucker was proud of her Jewish heritage and one of Tucker’s best know songs is My Yiddish Momme written for her in 1925 by Jack Yellen. The song has both Yiddish and English verses. At first she sang this in concert only when she felt the audience understood Yiddish, but later she would include it in her act. When Adolf Hitler came into power in Germany he ordered all copies of the song destroyed.

Tucker never retired from entertainer. She performed in the movies, on the radio and on Television as well as on the stage during her long career. She died at the age of 82 on February 9, 1966, in New York City, just a few weeks after her last performance.

Mission Santa Clara de Thamien

While George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin was creating a new country, a group of Spanish Fransciscan Friars under the leadership of Father Junípero Serra were establishing missions in present day California. On January 11, 1777 the Mission Santa Clara de Thamien was founded at the Indian village of So-co-is-u-ka on the Guadalupe River, by Franciscan Padres Tomás de la Peña and Joseph Antonio Marguia.

This mission was the eighth one established. In total there would be twenty one. It was the first of the missions named in honor of a woman, St. Clare of Assisi.

St. Clare was born Chiara Offreduccio in 1194. Before her death in 1253 she was one of the first followers of Francis of Assisi and founded the Order of the Poor Ladies. She was canonized as a saint in 1263 and Pope Urban IV changed the name of the Order of the Poor Ladies to the Order of Saint Clare in 1263.

The City of Santa Clara, California was named after the mission. The city has a population of 109,000. For many years the economy of the area centered on family owned orchard and vegetable farms. Now the semiconductor industry is the economic major player.

The mission itself is located on the grounds of Santa Clara University and is used for the school’s chapel. King Charles III of Spain sent to the mission bells and they have run every evening at 8:30 as he requested them to be rung in memory of those who have died.

Santa Clara University was founded in 1851 and is the oldest higher education institute in California. It is also the oldest Catholic university in the western United States. Some noted people who have attended Santa Clara University are basketball stars Kurt Rambis and Steve Nash, Soccer great Brandi Chastain, Jerry Brown, former Governor of California, and two members of the 60′s musical group Jefferson Airplane, Paul Kantner and Jorma Kaukonen.

Elizabeth Short aka the Black Dahlia

When Elizabeth Short left San Diego for Los Angeles on January 9, 1947 she was simply a 22 year old aspiring actress. On that day she hitched a ride to LA with salesman Robert Manley. He dropped her off at the Bilmore Hotel at around 6:30 PM. A few hours later she was seen leaving the Biltmore Hotel and walking south on Olive Street. A little later she was seen in the Crown Jewel Cocktail Lounge, formerly known as Broox’s Cocktail Lounge at Eight and Olive.

On the morning of January 15, 1947 a car was seen stopped at a vacant lot at 39th and Norton. At 10:54 a call is made to the LA Police Department with a report of a ‘person without clothes on’ at this vacant lot. When police arrived they discovered the naked and mutilated body of Elizabeth Short. Later her death would be listed as late on the 14th or early 15th. Nothing is known about her actions between the night/early morning of the 9th/10th and the discovery on the 15th.

Elizabeth Short was nicknamed the Black Dahlia. As with many things with this case and her life, it’s not really known whether this was a nickname that she was called while alive or was an invention of the press. The evidence points to a newspaper reporter invention. Many her knew her, referred to her as Bette.

Her murder is one of many unsolved Los Angeles murder cases. And it will probably never be solved. Too much evidence was compromised and there was police malfeasance. During the early days of the investigation there were as many newspaper reporters answering the phones at police headquarters as police officers.

There are plenty of suspects or persons that have been reported to be the Black Dahlia Murderer. Some of those suspects were cleared by police and others are though as doubtful because of some of the circumstances of the murders. About 60 people have confessed to the murder. Most of these were men but there also has been a few women.

Just as the number of suspects and confessed murders are a great number so are the myths and misconceptions about Elizabeth Short and the murder. One of the biggest is that she was a prostitute as well as an actress in underground sex films of the era. There is no evidence to this rumor and district attorney’s grand jury states that she was not a prostitute. Another is that at the time of her murder she was pregnant and the death was due to a blotched abortion. The autopsy describes Short’s reproductive organs as anatomically normal and states that Short was not and had never been pregnant.

The Silent Cowboy

Tom Mix became film’s first Western Movie star. He wasn’t born in the west, but in the east. He was born on January 6, 1880 in Mix Run, Pennsylvania.

His birth name was Thomas Hezekiah Mix, but when he enlisted in the army during the Spanish-American War he entered as Thomas E. Mix. The E is Edwin, his father’s name. Was his name ever legally changed. It was in his mind since he appeared to have never liked the name Hezekiah and always used Thomas Edwin Mix.

Mix was a real Cowboy. After army he worked his way west until finally working at Will A. Dickey’s Circle D Ranch. The ranch was hired by Selig Pictures to supply cowboys and Indians along with horses for the movies. Mix was originally hired by Selig to provide and handle horses.

The real Tom Mix and the Legend of Tom Mix are at times different. As a showman he tended to claim to have done things before his stardom that are either totally false or can’t be confirmed. While he was in the army during the Spanish-American War, he was not one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

Of the reported 336 films he appeared in between 1910 and 1935, all but nine were silent. As the first Western star he defined the cowboy genre. All that followed has Tom Mix to thank. In the 1920′s he was among the highest paid film stars and one of the decade’s top box stars.

During a trip through the Arizona deserts on October 12, 1940, when he took a turn a bit too fast a suitcase stuck him in the head. He lost control of his 1937 Cord Sportsman car and plunged into a ravine. The ravine where Mix died has been named “The Tom Mix Wash” in his honor.

Stephen Decatur

Stephen Decatur was born on January 5, 1779 in Berlin, Maryland and was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the age of 19 he joined the newly formed U.S. Navy, and rose rapidly in rank.

He was the youngest man to reach the rank of captain in the United States Navy. He also was the first American to be a national military hero who had not played a role in the American Revolution.

As a Lieutenant, Decatur lead a a night raid on February 16, 1804 into Tripoli harbor to destroy the previously captured U.S. frigate Philadelphia. Admiral Lord Nelson is said to have called his raid “the most bold and daring act of the Age”.

During the War of 1812 he commanded several ships including the USS United States in which he defeated one of Great Britain’s finest ships, the Macedonian. After the War he served as a Navy Commissioners in Washington DC.

The house that was built for Stephen Decatur and his wife Susan in the Capital city still remains as one of the oldest surviving homes in Washington. Across from the White House it is one of three remaining houses that were designed by the father of American architecture, Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

Stephen Decatur and James Barron had once been friends. When Barron was court martial in 1808 Decatur agreed with the verdict that expelled Barron from the Navy for five years. Throughout the next 12 years the two dueled through letters until on March 22, 1820, Commodore Stephen Decatur and Commodore James Barron met on the dueling ground in Bladensburg, Maryland. Both men were wounded, but it was Decatur who died later in the day at his home on Lafayette Square.

Remembering Topsy the Elephant

At the turn of the 20th Century all kinds of attractions were to be found at Coney Island in New York. One of those attractions were elephants and Topsy was a three-ton tusker who was one of those attractions. She also had been use to build some of the attractions due to her great strength.

But Topsy had killed three men in just the previous years, including a drunken trainer who had tried to feed her a lit cigarette.

It was decided that Topsy was a danger and should be put to death. The original thought was to hang the elephant, but that was determined to be cruel. Since 1890 New York had been using the Electric Chair and it had all but replaced the gallows.

It was decided to put her to death by electrocution. On January 4, 1903 after being fed carrots laced with cyanide she was electrocuted.

Thomas Edison used this as part of his “War of Currents” to show that AC was more dangerous than his DC in electric distribution. He also filmed the event.

1500 people as well as the film crew witnessed the event live. Thousands saw the film that was distributed by Edision’s Film Company.

Warning: This is the film of the actual event.

The Year of the Hobbit

Other than the possible end of the world, the Mayan Calendar 12th (and last) long count ends on December 20th, one of the highly anticipated events is the December release of the first of two movies made from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey). Beginning with January 3rd, which was the date of Tolkien’s birth, one could say that 2012 is the year of the the Hobbit.

The Hobbit, a children’s fantasy novel, was first published on September 21, 1937. It was so popular that a sequel was required. That sequel, much different and more adult, was the Lord of the Rings and set in Middle-Earth, Tolkien’s mythological world.

Ever since the final minutes of the final movie of the trilogy in 2003, Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King, there has been clambering for The Hobbit to be made as a movie by Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings. And finally in December of 2012 The Hobbit will hit the screen.

I was first introduced to the Hobbit and Tolkien’s world in summer of 1977. I don’t really remember why, but I picked up a 4 book package set that included The Hobbit and the three volume Lord of the Rings. I was introduced to Hobbits like all by reading the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Those that read The Hobbit after the Lord of the Rings, may be disappointed since the tone of the telling of the story is much different.

From now until December 14th, the scheduled date for the release of the first of the two Hobbit movies, much will be written and discussed. About the books, the author, and how the movie will presented. And to me, a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s world and stories, this is a very good thing. I am looking forward to the Year of the Hobbit.

Happy New Year

The celebration of the New Year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon 4000 years ago. The Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon after the first day of spring. The Romans in 153 BC established January 1 as the beginning of the New Year.

The Greeks introduced the tradition of a baby to symbolize the rebirth of the god of fertility Dionysus. Early Christians denounced the practice as pagan, but due to its popularity as a new birth they reevaluate their view and allowed members to celebrate the New Year with a baby that symbolized the birth of Jesus.

The Tournament of Roses Parade, in Pasadena, California began in 1886 when members of the Valley Hunt Club decorated their carriages with flowers to celebrate the ripening of the orange crop. The Rose Bowl football game began as the sports centerpiece of the festival in 1916, although a game had been played on that day in 1902.

The song ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which is sung at midnight of New Years eve in almost every English-speaking country was written by Robert Burns in the 1700′s. It was first published after his death in 1796. The music came from an old Scotch tune. ‘Auld Lang Syne’ means ‘old long since’. In the United States the most popular version is by Bandleader Guy Lombardo, who ushered in the New Year with the song on radio and the early days of television, following a tradition he started at a New Year’s eve party at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel in 1929. He played it every New Year’s eve until his death in 1976.

The watching the ball drop on New Year’s eve at New York’s Times Square began in 1907. The original ball was made of wood and iron. The current ball is of Waterford crystal and weighs 1,070 pounds and is six feet in diameter.

January 1st is ushered in first at Kiritimati on the Christmas Islands, in Kiribati. Not all cultures celebrate January 1st as the beginning of the New Year. The Chinese New Year begins on the new moon of the first lunar month which falls between January 21 and February 21. The Jewish New Year begins on Rosh Hashanah, ‘head of the year’. The Iranian New Year is the moment of the vernal equinox in March or when spring begins.