QUARANTINE BLOG # 365

March 30, 2021

Today is our look back at “this day in history.”

On March 1, 1932, Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the 20-month-old son Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was kidnaped from the family’s new mansion in Hopewell, New Jersey.  The Lindberghs discovered a ransom note demanding $50,000 in their son’s empty room.  The baby’s body was discovered near the Lindbergh mansion.  He had been killed the night of the kidnaping and was found less than a mile from home.  

Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe, was launched from Cape Canaveral, March 2, 1972, on a mission to Jupiter.  In December 1973, after successfully negotiating the asteroid belt and a distance of 620 million miles, Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter and sent back to Earth the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant.

On March 03, 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the official U.S. national anthem as President Herbert Hoover signed a congressional act.  Throughout the 19th century, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was regarded as the national anthem by most branches of the U.S. armed forces, but it was made official by Hoover’s act.

Ernest Hemingway completed his short novel The Old Man and the Sea on March 4, 1952.  He wrote his publisher saying it was the best writing he had ever done.  The critics agreed: The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and became one of his best-selling works.  Among other characters in the book is a baseball player named Dick Sisler.

Near the very height of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, on March 5, 1966,  popular-music fans made a #1 hit out of a song called “The Ballad Of The Green Berets” by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, an active-duty member of the United States Army Special Forces – the elite unit popularly known as the Green Berets.  Within two weeks of its major-label release, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” had sold more than a million copies, going on to become Billboard magazine’s #1 single for all of 1966.

The German company Bayer patented aspirin on March 6, 1899.  Now the most common drug in household medicine cabinets, acetylsalicylic acid was originally made from a chemical found in the bark of willow trees.

On March 7, 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone.  Three days after filing the patent, the telephone carried its first message – the famous “Mr. Watson, come here, I need you” – from Bell to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson.

March 8, 1917, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia’s use of the Julian calendar) began in Russia when riots and strikes over the scarcity of food erupt in Petrograd.  One week later, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, and Russia took a dramatic step closer toward communist revolution.

On March 9, 1959, the first Barbie doll went on display at the American Toy Fair in New York City.  Barbie was the first mass-produced toy doll in the United States with adult features.  Ruth Handler, designed the doll after seeing her young daughter ignore her baby dolls to play make-believe with paper dolls of adult women.

On March 11, 2011, the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan caused massive devastation, and the ensuing tsunami decimated the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu.  The natural disaster also gave rise to a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the second-worst nuclear disaster in history, forcing the relocation of over 100,000 people.

Though today there is almost nothing as ubiquitous as a bottle of Coca-Cola, this was not always the case. For the first several years of its existence, Coke was only available as a fountain drink, and its producer saw no reason for that to change. It was not until March 12, 1894 that Coke was first sold in bottles.

On March 14, 1990, the Congress of People’s Deputies elected General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as the new president of the Soviet Union.  While the election was a victory for Gorbachev, it also revealed serious weaknesses in his power base that would eventually lead to the collapse of his presidency in December 1991.

On March 15, 1972, The Godfather – a three-hour epic chronicling the lives of the Corleones, an Italian-American crime family led by the powerful Vito Corleone was released in theaters.  Marlon Brando won an Academy Award for Best Actor (which he declined to accept).  The film won also won for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.

70-year-old Golda Meir made history on March 17, 1969, when she was elected as Israel’s first female prime minister.  She was the country’s fourth prime minister and is still the only woman to have held this post.

A century ago, even before the phonograph, there was already a burgeoning music industry based on the sale of sheet music.  No song gained greater popularity in that era than Irving Berlin’s “Alexander's Ragtime Band.”  Copyrighted on March 18, 1911, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” was the multimillion-selling smash hit that helped turn American popular music into a major international phenomenon.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was published on March 20, 1852.  The novel sold 300,000 copies within three months.  While living in Cincinnati, Stowe encountered fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad inspired her to write the book which had a major influence on the way the American public viewed slavery.  

On March 21, 1980, J.R. Ewing, the character millions loved to hate on television’s popular prime-time drama “Dallas,” was shot by an unknown assailant.  The shooting made the season-ending episode one of TV’s most famous cliffhangers, inspired widespread media coverage and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?”

On March 22, 1894, the first championship series for Lord Frederick Stanley’s Cup was played in Montreal, Canada.  Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley, lord of Preston and the 16th earl of Derby, became an ice hockey fan after watching an 1889 game at the Montreal Winter Carnival.  The cup was given to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association team upon their defeat of the Ottawa Generals.

On March 23, 1839, the initials “O.K.” were first published in The Boston Morning Post.  Meant as an abbreviation for “oll korrect,” a popular slang misspelling of “all correct” at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.  Incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, and his Democratic supporters organized a group called the “O.K. Club,” which referred both to Van Buren’s nickname “Old Kinderhook” (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York).

One of the worst oil spills in U.S. territory began on March 24, 1989, when the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Prince William Sound in southern Alaska.  An estimated 11 million gallons of oil eventually spilled into the water.  Wind and currents spread the oil more than 100 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 700 miles of coastline.

The first colonists to Maryland arrived on Maryland’s western shore on March 25, 1634.  In 1632, King Charles I of England granted George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, rights to a region east of the Potomac River in exchange for a share of the income derived from the land.  The territory was named Maryland in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria.

On March 26, 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk announced that he had successfully tested a vaccine against polio.  In 1952 – an epidemic year for polio – there were 58,000 new cases reported in the United States, and more than 3,000 died from the disease.  Dr. Salk was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time.

In Washington, D.C., Helen Taft, wife of President William Taft, and the wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted two Yoshino cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac River, near the Jefferson Memorial, on March 27, 1912.  The event was held in celebration of a gift, by the Japanese government, of 3,020 cherry trees to the U.S. government.

At 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry began when a pressure valve in the Unit-2 reactor at Three Mile Island (near Harrisburg, PA) failed to close.  At about 8 p.m., plant operators realized they needed to get water moving through the core again and restarted the pumps.  The reactor had come within less than an hour of a complete meltdown.  In the four decades since the accident at Three Mile Island, not a single new nuclear power plant has been ordered in the United States.  

On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C. hotel by John Hinckley Jr, who fired six shots at the president, hitting Reagan and three of his attendants.  The president was shot in the left lung, and the .22 caliber bullet just missed his heart.  As he was treated and prepared for surgery, he was in good spirits and quipped to his wife, Nancy, “Honey, I forgot to duck,” and to his surgeons, “Please tell me you’re Republicans.”

An innovative musical called “Away We Go” was panned by critics after its tryout in New Haven.  This would prove to be one of the most off-base predictions in theater history when the slightly retooled show opened on Broadway on March 31, 1943 under a new title – “Oklahoma!” – and went on to set a Broadway record of 2,212 performances before the surrey with the fringe on top took its last ride 5 years later.

👉  Finally, the Solid Rock.

On March 15, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised no gatherings of 50 or more people in the United States because of the coronavirus.  One year later restrictions are still in place (although some are moving carelessly away from protocols which keep us safe).  With 2.79 million of us dead, and a vaccine available, many national borders are still close, international travel is largely suspended, many businesses have closed never to reopen, thousands are out of work, and many wonder if this new normal is going to be the continuing normal.

Some 3,000 years ago, the Chief Musician of Israel wrote a song of love, and set it to the tune of “The Lilies.”  It was a love song to the promised Messiah who was finally revealed in a Bethlehem manger.  Anticipating that day, the poet wrote, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom” (Psalm 45:6).  In times such as we now are living, we need something permanent, some solid, unmoving place to stand.  And here it is, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.”  The writer of Hebrews recorded, “He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’  So we may boldly say: ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?’” (Hebrews 13:5).

Uncertain times?  Yes.  But our Savior’s throne is forever, and he promised he would never leave us, never forsake us.  My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

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