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January 2011
25 Years Ago
October 1, 1981 President Ronald Reagan pledges that the United States will not let Saudi Arabia fall into the hands of any power that threatens to cut off its supply of petroleum to the West. The statement seems motivated by fears of an Iran-style revolution. On October 28, after much horse-trading and arm-twisting by Reagan’s aides, the Senate votes, 52–48, to permit sales of AWACS planes and other high-tech military equipment to the Saudis.
October 2, 1981 President Reagan abandons the mobile MX missile plan and announces his support for basing intercontinental missiles in hardened silos instead.
50 Years Ago
October 8, 1956 Don Larsen, a mediocre pitcher who was knocked out in the second inning of his previous start, pitches the only perfect game in World Series history as the New York Yankees defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 2–0.
75 Years Ago
As October began, General Charles Cornwallis and his army of 8000 redcoats and Hessians knew they were in deep trouble. In late August, after a summer filled with conflicting instructions, they had been ordered to establish a naval base on the Chesapeake. They chose a site at Yorktown, Virginia, set up camp, and waited for the Royal Navy to arrive. It never did.
The British high command had known that French ships were on the way to support the rebels, but, when a Royal Navy squadron reached the Chesapeake, it found nothing happening. So, it continued north to New York, which also needed protection. From New York, it and another squadron were hurriedly sent back to the Chesapeake, arriving in early September. But, by then, a huge French fleet was already in place. A week of naval battles drove the British off, leaving Cornwallis stranded.
In the summer of 1978, my wife, Betts, and I drove through Europe. After touring West Berlin, we decided to visit the eastern part of the city. At Checkpoint Charlie, we walked through a complicated network of wire cages. At the end, we stood and waited until the guard behind a gate chose to unlock it and let us in. I felt like a trained mouse being lured through a maze, and the sensation was not comfortable. The authorities took their good, sweet time processing our papers: one hour.
Once admitted, we walked for hours looking at a city in a state of disrepair. There were trees growing out of the tops of several damaged buildings; as long as the Russians were still around, the East Germans had scant incentive to rebuild. It was a Saturday and the stores were closed, so there was nothing to buy. We picked up a newspaper in a hotel lobby.
Jeff Bezos, January 12: Founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com; he was Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999.
Mariska Hargitay, January 23: The actress won an Emmy in 2006 for her role as Detective Olivia Benson in the hit show "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Bret Easton Ellis, March 7: Author of the novels Less Than Zero (1985), The Rules of Attraction (1987), and the controversial American Psycho (1991)
Bonnie Blair, March 18: Speed skater and one of the most decorated female athletes in Olympic history, with five gold medals and one bronze medal
James Langevin, April 22: Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Rhode Island
In the paper’s morning edition for March 27, 1964, The New York Times ran one of the most indelible leads in its 155-year history. “For more than half an hour,” began a front-page article by the reporter Martin Gansberg, “38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.”
The story went on to recount the killing of 28-year-old Catherine Genovese, known as Kitty, by a psychopath named Winston Moseley. The murder had occurred two weeks earlier, in the cold dark hours of March 13, shortly after Ms. Genovese drove into her neighborhood of faux-Tudor buildings in Queens, New York. Moseley followed, tailing her in a white Corvair. When she parked near her apartment building, he continued his pursuit on foot. Ms. Genovese made it only a few hundred feet up Austin Street, one of Kew Garden’s thoroughfares, before Moseley caught up to her and shoved a knife into her back. Later, after attempting to rape her in a foyer at the back of her building, he left her to bleed to death.
The year 1964 marked the last time that anyone in America relaxed with a cigarette. The date, to be exact, was January 10, 1964. On the next day, Surgeon General Luther L. Terry released his advisory panel’s report on smoking and health. After that, people could still smoke, of course, but never again in the hazy delusion that cigarettes were harmless.
The connection between smoking and disease had been noted early on. When European explorers brought tobacco home from the New World in the sixteenth century, smoking—that is to say, inhaling the smoke—was quickly recognized as a dangerous habit. Puffing on a long pipe was medically acceptable then, as were snorting snuff and working a chaw. For hundreds of years, though, smoking was something apart, something for “fiends,” deckhands, and exotic foreigners.
James Bond hit U.S. shores in 1964 with an impact that fitted the description Bond’s armorer, “Q,” gave of his .32-caliber Walther PPK: “Like a brick through a plate-glass window.” Goldfinger was number two in the U.S. box office in 1964, and From Russia With Love was number five, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The one film that outgrossed Goldfinger that year, Mary Poppins, was released much earlier in the year, while Goldfinger, establishing the trend of the big holiday adventure release, opened on December 22. Business at New York City theaters was round the clock.