On This Day in History

[Schmidt Meister]

March 3rd In Music

1965 - Eric Clapton plays his last show with The Yardbirds, leaving to join John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. He is replaced by Jeff Beck.

1969 - Led Zeppelin recorded their first BBC Radio 1 'Top Gear' session during the afternoon at the Playhouse Theatre in London, England. Songs recorded were 'Dazed And Confused', 'Communication Breakdown', 'You Shook Me' and 'I Can't Quit You Baby'. Free, The Moody Blues and Deep Purple were also in session on the show.

1973 - Slade's 'Com On Feel The Noize', entered the UK at No. 1, making Slade the first act to achieve this since The Beatles.

1984 - Nena started a three week run at No. 1 on the UK singles chart with '99 Red Balloons.' Originally sung in German, '99 Luftballons' was re-recorded in English as '99 Red Balloons'. The song was a No. 2 hit in the US and the only hit for Nena making her a One Hit Wonder.

2008 - Chumbawamba break the record for longest album title with their 160-word release The Boy Bands Have Won... (Using efficient typography, the British merrymakers get the full title on the cover:
The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether from Lack of Ideas or from Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother's Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don't Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to 'Guard' Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It's Over, Then It's Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won.

Birthdays:

1944 - Jance Garfat. Bassist, with American rock band Dr Hook who had the 1970s hits 'The Cover of Rolling Stone', 'A Little Bit More', 'When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman' and 'Sylvia's Mother'.

1948 - Terence White. Guitarist, who worked with Thin Lizzy, Pink Floyd and Roger Waters. As a solo artist, he had a 1983 UK Top 10 hit single 'Bird Of Paradise'.

1966 - Antony Smith - Tone-Loc, American actor, rapper, voice actor, and producer who had the 1989 UK No. 13 single,'Funky Cold Medina' for which he was nominated for a Grammy Award. Born in Los Angeles, California.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln becomes the 16th president of the United States. In his inauguration speech, Lincoln extended an olive branch to the South, but also made it clear that he intended to enforce federal laws in the states that seceded.
Since Lincoln’s election in November 1860, seven states had left the Union. Worried that the election of a Republican would threaten their rights, especially slavery, the lower South seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. In the process, some of those states seized federal properties such as armories and forts. By the time Lincoln arrived in Washington, D.C., for his inauguration, the threat of war hung heavy in the air. Lincoln took a cautious approach in his remarks, and made no specific threats against the Southern states. As a result, he had some flexibility in trying to keep the states of the upper South, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, in the Union.
In his inaugural address, Lincoln promised not to interfere with the institution of slavery where it existed, and pledged to suspend the activities of the federal government temporarily in areas of hostility. However, he also took a firm stance against secession and the seizure of federal property. The government, insisted Lincoln, would “hold, occupy, and possess” its property and collect its taxes. He closed his remarks with an eloquent reminder of the nation’s common heritage:
“In your hand, my fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it… We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Six weeks later, the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Civil War began.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 4, 1789, the first session of the U.S. Congress is held in New York City as the U.S. Constitution takes effect. However, of the 22 senators and 59 representatives called to represent the 11 states who had ratified the document, only nine senators and 13 representatives showed up to begin negotiations for its amendment.
In 1786, defects in the Articles of Confederation became apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce and the inability of Congress to levy taxes, leading Congress to endorse a plan to draft a new constitution. On September 17, 1787, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the new U.S. Constitution, creating a strong federal government with an intricate system of checks and balances, was signed by 38 of 41 delegates to the convention.
As dictated by Article VII, the document would not become binding until it was ratified by nine of the 13 states. The Constitution was thus sent to the state legislatures, and beginning on December 7, five states, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut, ratified it in quick succession. However, other states, especially Massachusetts, opposed the document for its failure to reserve powers not delegated by the Constitution to the states and its lack of constitutional protection for such basic political rights as freedom of speech, religion, and the press, and the right to bear arms.
In February 1788, a compromise was reached in which Massachusetts and other states agreed to ratify the document with the assurance that amendments would immediately be adopted. The Constitution was thus narrowly ratified in Massachusetts, followed by Maryland and South Carolina. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document, making it binding, and government under the U.S. Constitution was scheduled to begin on March 4, 1789.
On September 25, 1789, after several months of debate, the first Congress of the United States adopted 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and sent them to the states for ratification. This action led to the eventual ratification of the Constitution by the last of the 13 original colonies: North Carolina and Rhode Island.

[Schmidt Meister]

March 4th In Music

1974 - ABBA released 'Waterloo' the first single from their second album and the first single to be credited to the group performing under the name ABBA. It later became the winning entry for Sweden in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and a No. 1 hit in several countries. It reached the US Top 10 and went on to sell nearly six million copies, making it one of the best-selling singles in history.

Birthdays:

1948 - Chris Squire. Bassist and founding member of Yes and solo, 1984 US No. 1 single 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart'. He was the only member to appear on each of their 21 studio albums, released from 1969 to 2014. Born in London, England. Squire died on 6.27.2015.

1952 - Pete Haycock. British blues rock group Climax Blues Band, who had the 1977 US No. 3 single 'Couldn't Get It Right'. Born in Stafford, Staffordshire, England.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 5, 1963, the Hula Hoop, a hip-swiveling toy that became a huge fad across America when it was first marketed by Wham-O in 1958, is patented by the company’s co-founder, Arthur “Spud” Melin. An estimated 25 million Hula Hoops were sold in its first four months of production alone.
In 1948, friends Arthur Melin and Richard Knerr founded a company in California to sell a slingshot they created to shoot meat up to falcons they used for hunting. The company’s name, Wham-O, came from the sound the slingshots supposedly made. Wham-O eventually branched out from slingshots, selling boomerangs and other sporting goods. Its first hit toy, a flying plastic disc known as the Frisbee, debuted in 1957. The Frisbee was originally marketed under a different name, the Pluto Platter, in an effort to capitalize on America’s fascination with UFOs. (See also: https://www.frisbiepie.com/our_story/)
Melin and Knerr were inspired to develop the Hula Hoop after they saw a wooden hoop that Australian children twirled around their waists during gym class. Wham-O began producing a plastic version of the hoop, dubbed “Hula” after the hip-gyrating Hawaiian dance of the same name, and demonstrating it on Southern California playgrounds. Hula Hoop mania took off from there.
The enormous popularity of the Hula Hoop was short-lived and within a matter of months, the masses were on to the next big thing. However, the Hula Hoop never faded away completely and still has its fans today. According to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, in April 2004, a performer at the Big Apple Circus in Boston simultaneously spun 100 hoops around her body. Earlier that same year, in January, according to the Guinness World Records, two people in Tokyo, Japan, managed to spin the world’s largest hoop, at 13 feet, 4 inches, around their waists at least three times each.
Following the Hula Hoop, Wham-O continued to produce a steady stream of wacky and beloved novelty items, including the Superball, Water Wiggle, Silly String, Slip ‘n’ Slide and the Hacky Sack.

 

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 5, 1770, on a cold, snowy night, a mob of American colonists gathers at the Customs House in Boston and begins taunting the British soldiers guarding the building. The protesters, who called themselves Patriots, were protesting the occupation of their city by British troops, who were sent to Boston in 1768 to enforce unpopular taxation measures passed by a British parliament that lacked American representation.
British Captain Thomas Preston, the commanding officer at the Customs House, ordered his men to fix their bayonets and join the guard outside the building. The colonists responded by throwing snowballs and other objects at the British regulars, and Private Hugh Montgomery was hit, leading him to discharge his rifle at the crowd. The other soldiers began firing a moment later, and when the smoke cleared, five colonists were dead or dying, Crispus Attucks, Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick and James Caldwell, and three more were injured. The deaths of the five men are regarded by some historians as the first fatalities in the American Revolutionary War.
The British soldiers were put on trial, and patriots John Adams and Josiah Quincy agreed to defend the soldiers in a show of support of the colonial justice system. When the trial ended in December 1770, two British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and had their thumbs branded with an “M” for murder as punishment.
The Sons of Liberty, a Patriot group formed in 1765 to oppose the Stamp Act, advertised the “Boston Massacre” as a battle for American liberty and just cause for the removal of British troops from Boston. Patriot Paul Revere made a provocative engraving of the incident, depicting the British soldiers lining up like an organized army to suppress an idealized representation of the colonist uprising. Copies of the engraving were distributed throughout the colonies and helped reinforce negative American sentiments about British rule.
In April 1775, the American Revolution began when British troops from Boston skirmished with American militiamen at the battles of Lexington and Concord. The British troops were under orders to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington and to confiscate the Patriot arsenal at Concord. Neither missions were accomplished because of Paul Revere and William Dawes, who rode ahead of the British, warning Adams and Hancock and rousing the Patriot minutemen.
Eleven months later, in March 1776, British forces had to evacuate Boston following American General George Washington’s successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights. This bloodless liberation of Boston brought an end to the hated eight-year British occupation of the city. For the victory, General Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was presented with the first medal ever awarded by the Continental Congress. It would be more than five years before the Revolutionary War came to an end with British General Charles Cornwallis’ surrender to Washington at Yorktown, Virginia.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 5, 1946, in one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Churchill’s speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War.
Churchill, who had been defeated for re-election as prime minister in 1945, was invited to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri where he gave this speech. President Harry S. Truman joined Churchill on the platform and listened intently to his speech. Churchill began by praising the United States, which he declared stood “at the pinnacle of world power.” It soon became clear that a primary purpose of his talk was to argue for an even closer “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain, the great powers of the “English-speaking world”, in organizing and policing the postwar world. In particular, he warned against the expansionistic policies of the Soviet Union. In addition to the “iron curtain” that had descended across Eastern Europe, Churchill spoke of “communist fifth columns” that were operating throughout western and southern Europe. Drawing parallels with the disastrous appeasement of Hitler prior to World War II, Churchill advised that in dealing with the Soviets there was “nothing which they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness.”
Truman and many other U.S. officials warmly received the speech. Already they had decided that the Soviet Union was bent on expansion and only a tough stance would deter the Russians. Churchill’s “iron curtain” phrase immediately entered the official vocabulary of the Cold War. U.S. officials were less enthusiastic about Churchill’s call for a “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain. While they viewed the English as valuable allies in the Cold War, they were also well aware that Britain’s power was on the wane and had no intention of being used as pawns to help support the crumbling British empire. In the Soviet Union, Russian leader Joseph Stalin denounced the speech as “war mongering,” and referred to Churchill’s comments about the “English-speaking world” as imperialist “racism.” The British, Americans, and Russians, allies against Hitler less than a year before the speech, were drawing the battle lines of the Cold War.

[Schmidt Meister]

March 5th In Music

1953 - America learns of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's death when future country music star, Air Force Staff Sergeant Johnny Cash intercepts a coded message from Russia. Cash enlisted in 1950 after he turned 18 and was assigned to the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile of the US Air Force Security Service at Landsberg, West Germany, where he proved his skill as a Morse Code operator.

1956 - Elvis Presley scored his first US No. 1 single and album when 'Heartbreak Hotel' went to the top of the charts. 'Heartbreak Hotel' became his first million-seller, and was the best-selling single of 1956. The lyrics were based on a newspaper article about the suicide of a lonely man who jumped from a hotel window.

1965 - The Yardbirds release "For Your Love" in the UK.

1969 - Creedence Clearwater Revival release "Bad Moon Rising."

Birthdays:

1951 - Rex Goh. Guitarist, for the Australian soft rock band Air Supply who scored the 1980 UK No. 11 single 'All Out Of Love' and the 1981 US No. 1 single 'The One That You Love'.

1952 - Alan Clark. English musician who was the first and main keyboardist for the rock band Dire Straits. In 1983 he played on Bob Dylan's album Infidels and toured and recorded extensively with Eric Clapton. Clark has also played and recorded with other artists, including the Bee Gees, Billy Joel, Lou Reed, Prefab Sprout, Robert Cray, Al Green, Van Morrison, Roger Daltrey, George Harrison, Elton John, Phil Collins. Born in Great Lumley, England.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 6, 1836, after 13 days of intermittent fighting, the Battle of the Alamo comes to a gruesome end, capping off a pivotal moment in the Texas Revolution. Mexican forces were victorious in recapturing the fort, and nearly all of the roughly 200 Texan defenders, including frontiersman Davy Crockett, died.
Thirteen days earlier, on February 23, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered a siege of the Alamo Mission (near present-day San Antonio), which had been occupied by rebel Texas forces since December. An army of over 1,000 Mexican soldiers began descending on the makeshift fort and setting up artillery.
Over the next two weeks, the two armies traded gunfire, but there were few casualties. Despite being clearly outnumbered, Alamo co-commanders James Bowie and William Travis insisted on remaining in place. The volunteer soldiers defending the Alamo included doctors and farmers, as well as Tennessee frontiersman and Congressman Davy Crockett, who fought in the Tennessee militia.
The final attack came before dawn on March 6. Mexican troops breached the north wall and flooded into the compound, awakening many of the Texans inside. The fighting lasted 90 minutes, some of it hand-to-hand combat. Bowie and Travis were killed, as was Crockett, although reports differ as to exactly how and when. Several Texans reportedly surrendered, but Santa Anna ordered all prisoners be executed. Only a handful survived, mostly women and children. Historians estimate several hundred Mexicans died.
After the battle, the Mexican army marched east. Meanwhile, Sam Houston, commander of the Texas forces, had been building and developing his army in Harris County. “Remember the Alamo!” became their rallying cry as an urgent reminder to avenge their earlier defeat. On April 21, Texas and Mexico fought again at the Battle of San Jacinto. Texas was victorious this time, and won independence from Mexico, bringing the Texas Revolution to an end.

[Schmidt Meister]

March 6th In Music

1970 - Charles Manson released an album called Lie to help raise money for his defence in the Tate-LeBianca murder trial. The album jacket was made to look like a cover of Life magazine with the letter f removed from the word Life. In the mid sixties, Manson had been a wanna-be musician who befriended The Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, eventually talking the group into recording one of his songs, 'Cease To Exist'. The title was changed to 'Never Learn Not To Love' and was released as the B side of the single 'Bluebirds Over The Mountain', which eventually climbed to No. 61 in the US in early 1969.

1975 - Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album is certified Gold.

Birthdays:

1946 - David Gilmour. Guitarist, vocalist for Pink Floyd after 1968. After Roger Waters' departure in 1985, David created two further Floyd albums, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, with Nick Mason and Richard Wright. He was appointed a CBE in 2003 for his services to music. He released his first solo album, David Gilmour, in 1978, followed by About Face in 1984 and 2006's On An Island, which charted at No. 6 in the US. Born in Cambridge, England.

1947 - Kiki Dee. (Pauline Matthews) Singer and actress who had the 1976 US No. 1 single Don't Go Breaking My Heart' with Elton John. As a session singer she worked with Dusty Springfield and also became the first white British artist to be signed by Motown Records, releasing her first Motown single in 1970. Born in Little Horton, Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 7, 1876, 29 year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention, the telephone.
The Scottish born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where the younger Bell found work as a teacher at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf. He later married one of his students, Mabel Hubbard.
While in Boston, Bell became very interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Samuel F.B. Morse’s invention of the telegraph in 1843 had made nearly instantaneous communication possible between two distant points. The drawback of the telegraph, however, was that it still required hand-delivery of messages between telegraph stations and recipients, and only one message could be transmitted at a time. Bell wanted to improve on this by creating a “harmonic telegraph,” a device that combined aspects of the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to each other from a distance.
With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype. In this first telephone, sound waves caused an electric current to vary in intensity and frequency, causing a thin, soft iron plate, called the diaphragm, to vibrate. These vibrations were transferred magnetically to another wire connected to a diaphragm in another, distant instrument. When that diaphragm vibrated, the original sound would be replicated in the ear of the receiving instrument. Three days after filing the patent, the telephone carried its first intelligible message, the famous “Mr. Watson, come here, I need you”, from Bell to his assistant.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 7, 1936, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany.
The Treaty of Versailles, signed in July 1919, eight months after the guns fell silent in World War I, called for stiff war reparation payments and other punishing peace terms for defeated Germany. Having been forced to sign the treaty, the German delegation to the peace conference indicated its attitude by breaking the ceremonial pen. As dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany’s military forces were reduced to insignificance and the Rhineland was to be demilitarized.
In 1925, at the conclusion of a European peace conference held in Switzerland, the Locarno Pact was signed, reaffirming the national boundaries decided by the Treaty of Versailles and approving the German entry into the League of Nations. The so-called “spirit of Locarno” symbolized hopes for an era of European peace and goodwill, and by 1930 German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had negotiated the removal of the last Allied troops in the demilitarized Rhineland.
However, just four years later, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized full power in Germany, promising vengeance against the Allied nations that had forced the Treaty of Versailles on the German people. In 1935, Hitler unilaterally canceled the military clauses of the treaty and in March 1936 denounced the Locarno Pact and began remilitarizing of the Rhineland. Two years later, Nazi Germany burst out of its territories, absorbing Austria and portions of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

[Schmidt Meister]

March 7th In Music

1970 - Simon and Garfunkels album Bridge Over Troubled Water started a ten week run at No. 1 on the US chart, longer than any other LP in 1970. The duo had split-up by the time of release.

Birthdays:

1946 - Matthew Fisher. From Procol Harum who had the 1967 US No. 5 single 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' (one of the few singles to have sold over 10 million copies) and scored the hits 'Homburg', 'Conquistador'. Born in Croydon, England.

1946 - Peter Wolf. Singer with American rock band The J Geils Band, who had the 1982 US No. 1 single 'Centerfold' which was taken from their US No. 1 1981 album Freeze Frame. Born in the Bronx, New York.

1952 - Ernie Isley. American group The Isley Brothers who first came to prominence in 1959 with their fourth single, 'Shout', and then the 1962 hit 'Twist and Shout. The Isley Brothers also scored the hits 'This Old Heart Of Mine', 'Summer Breeze' and 'Harvest for the World'. Sixteen of their albums charted in the Top 40. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 8, 1957, following Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Egyptian territory, the Suez Canal is reopened to international traffic. However, the canal was so littered with wreckage from the Suez Crisis that it took weeks of cleanup by Egyptian and United Nations workers before larger ships could navigate the waterway.
The Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas across Egypt, was completed by French engineers in 1869. For the next 88 years, it remained largely under British and French control, and Europe depended on it as an inexpensive shipping route for oil from the Middle East.
In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal, hoping to charge tolls that would pay for construction of a massive dam on the Nile River. In response, Israel invaded in late October, and British and French troops landed in early November, occupying the canal and other Suez territory. Under pressure from the United Nations, Britain and France withdrew in December, and Israeli forces departed in March 1957. That month, Egypt took over control of the canal and reopened it to commercial shipping. Ten years later, Egypt shut down the canal again following the Six Day War and Israel’s occupation of the Sinai peninsula. It remained closed for eight years, ending when Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat reopened it in 1975 after peace talks with Israel.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 8, 1965, the USS Henrico, Union, and Vancouver, carrying the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade under Brig. Gen. Frederick J. Karch, take up stations 4,000 yards off Red Beach Two, north of Da Nang.
First ashore was the Battalion Landing Team 3/9, which arrived on the beach at 8:15 a.m. Wearing full battle gear and carrying M-14s, the Marines were met by sightseers, South Vietnamese officers, Vietnamese girls with leis, and four American soldiers with a large sign stating: “Welcome, Gallant Marines.” Gen. William Westmoreland, senior U.S. military commander in Saigon, was reportedly “appalled” at the spectacle because he had hoped that the Marines could land without any fanfare. Within two hours, Battalion Landing Team 1/3 began landing at Da Nang air base.
The 3,500 Marines were deployed to secure the U.S. airbase, freeing South Vietnamese troops up for combat. On March 1, Ambassador Maxwell Taylor had informed South Vietnamese Premier Phan Huy Quat that the United States was preparing to send the Marines to Vietnam. Three days later, a formal request was submitted by the U.S. Embassy, asking the South Vietnamese government to “invite” the United States to send the Marines. Premier Quat, a mere figurehead, had to obtain approval from the real power, Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, chief of the Armed Forces Council. Thieu approved, but, like Westmoreland, asked that the Marines be “brought ashore in the most inconspicuous way feasible.” These wishes were ignored and the Marines were given a hearty, conspicuous welcome when they arrived.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 8, 1942, Dutch forces surrender to the Japanese after two months of fighting.
Java is an island of modern-day Indonesia, and it lies southeast of Malaysia and Sumatra, south of Borneo and west of Bali. The Dutch had been in Java since 1596, establishing the Dutch East India Company, a trading company with headquarters at Batavia (modern-day Jakarta), which the Dutch commandeered in 1619. The Dutch East India Company began to assert greater and greater control over the Muslim kingdoms of the East Indies, transforming them into vassal states, with peasants growing rice, sugar, pepper, and coffee for the Dutch government. The company was dissolved in 1799 because of debts and corruption, and the Dutch government took control of the East Indies directly.
The British supplanted the Dutch in Java for a brief period (1811-1816), but the Dutch returned to power, slowly granting native Javanese more local control, even giving them a majority on the People’s Council. But on January 11, 1942, the Japanese declared war on the Royal Dutch government with its invasion of Borneo and the Island of Celebes, a date that also marked the beginning of the end of the Dutch presence in the East Indies. Sumatra was the next site of Japanese occupation, with paratroopers and troops landing from transports on February 14-16. Seven thousand British and Australian troops reinforced the Dutch fighters on Java, but the Allies pulled out of the fight in late February at the approach of two more large Japanese invasion forces that arrived on March 1.
The Dutch finally ended all resistance to the superior Japanese forces on March 8, surrendering on Java. Java’s independence of colonial control became a final fact of history in 1950, when it became part of the newly independent Republic of Indonesia.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 8, 1950, Volkswagen, maker of the Beetle automobile, expands its product offerings to include a microbus, which goes into production on March 8, 1950. Known officially as the Volkswagen Type 2 (the Beetle was the Type 1) or the Transporter, the bus was a favorite mode of transportation for hippies in the U.S. during the 1960s and became an icon of the American counterculture movement.
The VW bus was reportedly the brainchild of Dutch businessman Ben Pon, an importer of Beetles to the Netherlands, who saw a market for a small bus and in 1947 sketched out his concept. Volkswagen engineers further developed the idea and in March 1950, the vehicle, with its boxy, utilitarian shape and rear engine, went into production. The bus eventually collected a number of nicknames, including the “Combi” (for combined-use vehicle) and the “Splittie” (for its split windshield); in Germany it was known as the “Bulli.” In the U.S., it was referred to by some as a hippie van or bus because it was used to transport groups of young people and their camping gear and other supplies to concerts and anti-war rallies. Some owners painted colorful murals on their buses and replaced the VW logo on the front with a peace symbol. According to “Bug” by Phil Patton, when Grateful Dead musician Jerry Garcia died in 1995, Volkswagen ran an ad featuring a drawing of the front of a bus with a tear streaming down it.
The bus was only the second product offering for Volkswagen, a company whose history dates back to the 1930s Germany. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and announced he wanted to build new roads and affordable cars for the German people. At that time, Austrian-born engineer Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was already working on creating a small car for the masses. Hitler and Porsche later met and the engineer was charged with designing the inexpensive, mass-produced Volkswagen, or “people’s car.” In 1938, work began on the Volkswagen factory, located in present-day Wolfsburg, Germany; however, full-scale vehicle production didn’t begin until after World War II.
In the 1950s, the Volkswagen arrived in the U.S., where the initial reception was tepid, due in part to the car’s historic Nazi connection as well as its small size and unusual rounded shape (which later led to it being dubbed the “Beetle”). In 1959, the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach launched a groundbreaking campaign that promoted the car’s diminutive size as a distinct advantage to consumers, and over the next several years VW became the top-selling auto import in the U.S. In 1972, the VW Beetle passed the iconic Ford Model T as the world’s best-selling car, with over 15 million vehicles produced.

[Schmidt Meister]

March 8th In Music

1969 - Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary" hits No. 2 on the Hot 100, where it stays for three weeks. It's the first of five CCR singles to reach the runner-up spot on the chart without ever hitting No. 1.

1969 - ”Happy Birthday" becomes the first song to be sung in outer space when the astronauts on Apollo IX sing it to celebrate the birthday of the director of NASA space operations, Christopher Kraft.

1971 - Radio Hanoi, which is a propaganda radio station set up by the North Vietnamese army to broadcast to American troops serving in Vietnam, goes on the air with a recording of Jimi Hendrix' version of The Star-Spangled Banner.

1974 - Rising from the ashes of Free and Mott the Hoople, the newly formed Bad Company play their first live gig, at Newcastle City Hall in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.

1975 - Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow" hits No. 1 in the US.

Birthdays:

1946 - Randy Meisner. Guitarist with Poco who later joined the Eagles. He quit The Eagles in 1977. Born in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

1946 - Carole Bayer Sager, singer, songwriter. Wrote 'Groovy Kind Of Love', hit for The Mindbenders and Phil Collins. Born in Manhattan, New York City.

1947 - Mike Allsup. Guitarist with Three Dog Night who had the 1970 US No. 1 single with their version of the Randy Newman song 'Mama Told Me Not To Come'. Born in Oakdale, California.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 9, 1959, the first Barbie doll goes on display at the American Toy Fair in New York City.
Eleven inches tall, with a waterfall of blond hair, Barbie was the first mass-produced toy doll in the United States with adult features. The woman behind Barbie was Ruth Handler, who co-founded Mattel, Inc. with her husband in 1945. After seeing her young daughter ignore her baby dolls to play make-believe with paper dolls of adult women, Handler realized there was an important niche in the market for a toy that allowed little girls to imagine the future.
Barbie’s appearance was modeled on a doll named Lilli, based on a German comic strip character. Originally marketed as a racy gag gift to adult men in tobacco shops, the Lilli doll later became extremely popular with children. Mattel bought the rights to Lilli and made its own version, which Handler named after her daughter, Barbara. With its sponsorship of the “Mickey Mouse Club” TV program in 1955, Mattel became the first toy company to broadcast commercials to children. They used this medium to promote their new toy, and by 1961, the enormous consumer demand for the doll led Mattel to release a boyfriend for Barbie. Handler named him Ken, after her son. Barbie’s best friend, Midge, came out in 1963; her little sister, Skipper, debuted the following year.
Over the years, Barbie generated huge sales, and a lot of controversy. On the positive side, many women saw Barbie as providing an alternative to traditional 1950s gender roles. She has had a series of different jobs, from airline stewardess, doctor, pilot and astronaut to Olympic athlete and even U.S. presidential candidate. Others thought Barbie’s never-ending supply of designer outfits, cars and “Dream Houses” encouraged kids to be materialistic. It was Barbie’s appearance that caused the most controversy, however. Her tiny waist and enormous breasts, it was estimated that if she were a real woman, her measurements would be 36-18-38, led many to claim that Barbie provided little girls with an unrealistic and harmful example and fostered negative body image.
Despite the criticism, sales of Barbie-related merchandise continued to soar, topping 1 billion dollars annually by 1993. Since 1959, over one billion dolls in the Barbie family have been sold around the world and Barbie is now a bona fide global icon.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 9, 1781, after successfully capturing British positions in Louisiana and Mississippi, Spanish General Bernardo de Galvez, commander of the Spanish forces in North America, turns his attention to the British-occupied city of Pensacola, Florida, on March 9, 1781. General Galvez and a Spanish naval force of more than 40 ships and 3,500 men landed at Santa Rosa Island and begin a two-month siege of British occupying forces that becomes known as the Battle of Pensacola.
Galvez’s flotilla survived a hurricane in harbor before initiating two months of constant artillery and cannon bombardment of the British forts. By April 23, reinforcements had arrived, increasing Galvez’s total force to 7,800 and, on the morning of May 8, 1781, the 18-year British occupation of Pensacola, Florida, ended with a British surrender. The British lost 105 men; the Spanish lost 78. An additional 198 Spaniards were wounded. Spain took 1,113 prisoners and sent 300 Britons to Georgia on the promise that they would not reenter the British military.
Spain never officially signed an alliance with the American revolutionaries, as King Charles III was hesitant about the precedent he might be starting by encouraging the population of another empire to overthrow their monarch. However, Spain also wanted to regain Gibraltar in the Mediterranean and solidify control of its North American holdings, so it allied itself to France in the international war against Britain. As a result, Spain regained West Florida during the fighting and East Florida, which it exchanged for the Bahamas, in the final peace. Though Gibraltar remained in British control, Spain held all the land surrounding the Gulf of Mexico.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 9, 1916, angered over American support of his rivals for the control of Mexico, the peasant-born revolutionary leader Pancho Villa attacks the border town of Columbus, New Mexico.
In 1913, a bloody civil war in Mexico brought the general Victoriano Huerta to power. American President Woodrow Wilson despised the new regime, referring to it as a “government of butchers,” and provided active military support to a challenger, Venustiano Carranza. Unfortunately, when Carranza won power in 1914, he also proved a disappointment and Wilson supported yet another rebel leader, Pancho Villa.
A wily, peasant-born leader, Villa joined with Emiliano Zapata to keep the spirit of rebellion alive in Mexico and harass the Carranza government. A year later, though, Wilson decided Carranza had made enough steps towards democratic reform to merit official American support, and the president abandoned Villa. Outraged, Villa turned against the United States. In January 1916, he kidnapped 18 Americans from a Mexican train and slaughtered them. A few weeks later, on this day in 1916, Villa led an army of about 1,500 guerillas across the border to stage a brutal raid against the small American town of Columbus, New Mexico. Villa and his men killed 19 people and left the town in flames.
Now determined to destroy the rebel he had once supported, Wilson ordered General John Pershing to lead 6,000 American troops into Mexico and capture Villa. Reluctantly, Carranza agreed to allow the U.S. to invade Mexican territory. For nearly two years, Pershing and his soldiers chased the elusive Villa on horseback, in automobiles, and with airplanes. The American troops had several bloody skirmishes with the rebels, but Pershing was never able to find and engage Villa.
Finally losing patience with the American military presence in his nation, Carranza withdrew permission for the occupation. Pershing returned home in early 1917, and three months later left for Europe as the head of the American Expeditionary Force of World War I. Though Pershing never captured Villa, his efforts did convince Villa never again to attack American citizens or territory. After helping remove Carranza from power in 1920, Villa agreed to retire from politics. His enemies assassinated him in 1923. The resentment engendered in Mexico by the efforts against Pancho Villa, however, did not fade with his death, and Mexican-American relations remained strained for decades to come.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 9, 1916, Germany declares war on Portugal, who earlier that year honored its alliance with Great Britain by seizing German ships anchored in Lisbon’s harbor.
Portugal became a republic in 1910 after a revolution led by the country’s military toppled King Manuel II (his father, King Carlos, and elder brother had been assassinated two years earlier). A liberal constitution was enacted in 1911, and Manuel JosÉ de Arriaga was elected as the republic’s first president.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Portugal became increasingly anxious about the security of its colonial holdings in Angola and Mozambique. In order to secure international support for its authority in Africa, Portugal entered the war on the side of Britain and the Allies. Its participation was at first limited to naval support. In February 1917, however, Portugal sent its first troops, an expeditionary force of 50,000 men, to the Western Front. They saw action for the first time in Belgium on June 17 of that year.
One notable battle in which Portuguese forces took part was the Battle of Lys, near the Lys River in the Flanders region of Belgium, in April 1918. It was part of the major German offensive, the last of the war, launched that spring on the Western Front. During that battle, one Portuguese division of troops was struck hard by four German divisions; the preliminary shelling alone was so heavy that one Portuguese battalion refused to push forward into the trenches.
All told, the victorious Germans took more than 6,000 prisoners in that conflict and were able to push through enemy lines along a three-and-a-half mile stretch. By the time World War I ended, a total of 7,000 Portuguese soldiers had died in combat.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 9, 1918, the ascendant Bolshevik Party formally changes its name to the All-Russian Communist Party. It was neither the first nor the last time the party would alter its name to reflect a slight change in allegiance or direction; however, it was the birth of the Communist Party as it is remembered to history. With this change, the cadre that had brought down both Czar Nicolas II and the Provisional Government that followed his abdication announced itself to the world as a communist government, and it would unilaterally rule the emerging Union of Soviet Socialists Republics until 1991.
The Bolsheviks, Russian for "members of the majority”, had been the more aggressive faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, pushing for a more militant membership and explicitly endorsing the nationalization of land. Despite the exile of their leader, Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks supplied much of the manpower and intellectual fervor behind the February Revolution of 1917, which forced the abdication of the czar. As workers across the country organized themselves into political units known as soviets, the Bolsheviks' support was more fervent and more widespread than that of the Provisional Government, which they eyed with distrust. Acting through the Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks rose against this government in the October Revolution, quickly seizing the Winter Palace and arresting most of the cabinet.
As revolution spread throughout Russia, the Bolsheviks acted quickly. They withdrew Russia from World War I, the stresses of which are often cited as a major cause of the revolution. They also began seizing and redistributing imperial lands. By early 1918, factories had been turned over the soviets, private property had officially been abolished, and Russia had become the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, soon to be the largest constituent republic of the USSR. It was a stunning victory for Lenin, the forces of Russian socialism, and Marxists around the world. In keeping with the Marxist axiom that communism would inevitably replace capitalism by means of socialism, the Bolshevik Party rebranded as the Communist Party.
For the rest of the Soviet Union's existence, the leadership of the party and the leadership of the nation were one and the same. Under this leadership, the USSR became one of the two great economic and military powers of the world, sacrificing more of its people than all other Allied nations combined in World War II and emerging as the only serious competitor to the American juggernaut. Communist rule was notorious for authoritarian rule, the imprisonment of political dissidents, and the stifling of dissent, particularly under Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin.

[Schmidt Meister]

On March 9, 1862, one of the most famous naval battles in American history occurs as two ironclads, the U.S.S. Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia, fight to a draw off Hampton Roads, Virginia. The ships pounded each other all morning but their armor plates easily deflected the cannon shots, signaling a new era of steam-powered iron ships.
The C.S.S. Virginia was originally the U.S.S. Merrimack, a 40-gun frigate launched in 1855. The Confederates captured it and covered it in heavy armor plating above the waterline. Outfitted with powerful guns, the Virginia was a formidable vessel when the Confederates launched her in February 1862. On March 8, the Virginia sunk two Union ships and ran one aground off Hampton Roads.
The next day, the U.S.S. Monitor steamed into the Chesapeake Bay. Designed by Swedish engineer John Ericsson, the vessel had an unusually low profile, rising from the water only 18 inches. The flat iron deck had a 20-foot cylindrical turret rising from the middle of the ship; the turret housed two 11-inch Dahlgren guns. TheMonitor had a draft of less than 11 feet so it could operate in the shallow harbors and rivers of the South. It was commissioned on February 25, 1862, and arrived at Chesapeake Bay just in time to engage the Virginia.
The battle between the Virginia and the Monitor began on the morning of March 9 and continued for four hours. The ships circled one another, jockeying for position as they fired their guns. The cannon balls simply deflected off the iron ships. In the early afternoon, the Virginia pulled back to Norfolk. Neither ship was seriously damaged, but the Monitor effectively ended the short reign of terror that the Confederate ironclad had brought to the Union navy.
Both ships met ignominious ends. When the Yankees invaded the James Peninsula two months after the battle at Hampton Roads, the retreating Confederates scuttled their ironclad. The Monitor went down in bad weather off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, at the end of the year. Though they had short lives, the ships ushered in a new era in naval warfare.

[Schmidt Meister]

March 9th In Music

1985 - REO Speedwagon started a three week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Can't Fight This Feeling'.

1987 - U2 released their fifth studio album The Joshua Tree which features the singles 'Where The Streets Have No Name', and 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For'. The album spent a total of 201 weeks on the UK chart. It topped the charts in over 20 countries and became U2's first US No. 1 album.

Birthdays:

1945 - Robin Trower. English rock guitarist and vocalist who with Procol Harum, had the 1967 US No. 5 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale'. He formed the Robin Trower Band in 1973 and has since released over 20 albums. Born in London, England.

1948 - Chris Thompson. Singer with Manfred Mann's Earth Band, who had the 1976 US No. 1 single 'Blinded By The Light'.