Looking around the internet I found some really interesting tidbits that involved things that I have a particular interest in but weren't exactly watershed moments in their field. Some were cool, some odd, others tragic. All-in-all, these are great factoids but weren't things that I can really develop an entire article around.
Let's look at a few:
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| Another concert I wish I could have gone to! ELO was in Texas!!! |
- 40 years ago today some really awesome bands had concerts that I wish that I could've attended. The Talking Heads played the Rathskeller in Boston. Kiss lit up the East Coast and Van Halen was cruising around the Central Plains.
- Tom 'The Greek' Kapatos, bodyguard to Irish mobster Mickey Spillane is gunned down by a hired hand by the Italian mafia. This murder is seen as one of the acts that begins the end of the Irish mob in New York City. One of my favorite books made into a film Wiseguy/ Goodfellas alludes to this war between the Irish and Italians towards the third act.
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| The Bandit's hat is not included in the sale of this Trans-Am. |
- From the Weird Drivers file: on this date, a man purchases a brand new 1977 Pontiac Trans-Am from Emerson Pontiac in Pekin, IL. For the next year and a half, the man uses the car as his daily automobile, meticulously tracking the 20703 miles he puts on the car after every use. For the next 36 years, he uses the car sparingly having documented a total of 48,975 miles. The guy even has details of every person to have ever driven the car and reports that it was only driven in the rain a total of 5 times. In 2015, 38-years to the day he bought the car, the man sold it to Carlyle Motors in Texas. As of Wednesday, the car is still at Carlyle, where for the price of $79,000, this replica of the car driven by Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit can be yours.
Nakata is widely considered the greatest
soccer player in Japanese history.
- I noticed that a lot of soccer players were born on this day. Most famous is the Japanese player, Hidetoshi Kakata. I played soccer in high school, all four years. I don't recall there being very many teammates sharing birthdays with one another.
- Lastly, Soviet TV airs a propaganda film called 'Buyers of Souls." This anti-Semitic picture will lead to the KGB arresting and imprisoning several key Zionist leaders in the following days. All arrested were accused of being CIA spies and basically tried by a kangaroo court that refused the defendants right to attorneys, making the prisoners defend themselves. The KGB would later demand that all who defended themselves were not permitted by law to do so and their testimonies rendered inadmissible. Eventually, Israel in able to negotiate many of the accused extraditions to the Holy Land in exchange for captured Soviet spies.
This last one really burns me up. I have such a heart for the Jewish people. In high school, I actually made it a goal to marry a Jewish person who was a Christian. People said I was crazy and never find one. Well, I did. My wife is half-Jewish and my 5 children, God rest their souls, are a quarter Jewish. So for me, when I see Jews attacked, I see it as an attack on my family.
It's just hard to believe that after so many years, this sort of thing still occurs. It happened during World War II and you'd think after the horrors of the holocaust, people would have learned. Yet in the year I was born and still now 40 years later, the Jewish people are still targets of hatred and bitterness.
So much for light and peppy... But that's history for you. No matter how funny or odd you might find something, like the guy obsessed over his Trans Am, there's a tragedy on the other side world. It's one reason why this Madman continues to promise for the next 343 days I won't gloss over the controversal just to defend my favorite year.
Until tomorrow...
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