Edison’s demonstration of the electric light bulb in 1879

Today this happened in the past

December 31, 1879

Edison’s demonstration of the electric light bulb in 1879. The image is the light bulb Thomas Edison demonstrated at Menlo Park, New Jersey

The United Auto Workers union first sit-down strike

The United Auto Workers union first sit-down strike.

December 30, 1936

The United Auto Workers (UAW) was only recently formed in 1935 and decided it needed to make a larger impact than staging smaller strikes. Their idea was to strike at the "biggest and badest" firms that could get far more national attention and at the same time affect the production of automobiles.

At that time the "biggest and badest" was GM's production complex in Flint, Michigan. GM controlled city politics and was weary of outsiders, the factories also had many spies. Wyndham Mortimer, a UAW officer, recalled in 1936 that he received a call shortly after checking into his hotel telling him to leave unless he didn't "want to be carried out in a wooden box".

Sit-down strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher body plant number three. Photo by Sheldon Dick, 1937.

The sit-down strike was different than the conventional method of picketing outside of a company's facility. Workers would literally sit on machines or other assets owned by the company. They would occupy the plant so that management could not replace them with other non-union workers and begin production once again.

There were other strikes at GM during the 1936-37 period in Kansas City and Cleveland, but the Flint strike was the most devastating to GM.  Flint contained one of just two sets of the auto body dies that GM used to stamp out almost every one of its 1937 cars.

Young striker off sentry duty sleeping on assembly line of auto seats

 GM and the bought city, through the police, fought back.  On January 11, 1937, the police entered the Fisher Body 2 plant armed with guns and tear gas. According to Wikipedia:

"The strikers inside the plant pelted them with hinges, bottles, and bolts, led by Bob Travis and Rob Reather. They were able to withstand several waves of attack, eventually ending the standoff. The strikers dubbed this "The Battle of Bulls Run", a mocking reference to the police ("bulls"). Fourteen strikers were injured by gunfire during the battle."

Even thought General Motors had an extreme amount of clout with city and state politicians,  Michigan Governor Frank Murphy refused to storm the factories where GM workers took control by using the National Gaurd. Instead, he used the Gaurd to protect the workers, as he stated:

“If I send those soldiers right in on the men,” he said, “there’d be no telling how many would be killed.” As a result, he declared, “The state authorities will not take sides. They are here only to protect the public peace.”

Michigan National Guardsmen face a crowd of strike supporters across the street from the General Motors complex during the Sit-Down Strike, Flint, Michigan.

National Guardsmen with machine guns overlooking Chevrolet factories number nine and number four.
 

Sit-down strikers in the Fisher body plant factory number three.
Flint, Michigan

Strikers made the factories a city even providing music.

Retired Major Henry A. Geerds examines a model of a machine gun made by strikers at the Fisher Body Plant no. 2 in Flint. 

A United Auto Workers rally in Detroit's Cadillac Square drew 150,000 supporters.

There were several other developments and more factories began to strike all of which brought the two sides together. The strike lasted 44 days and an agreement was reached on February 11, 1937. The one-page agreement was simple but it was powerful since GM, and eventually the whole Automotive industry, now had to recognize the UAW as the exclusive bargaining representative for the autoworkers. The UAW was now legitimate bargaining organization. The workers also received a 5 percent pay increase and were allowed to talk during lunch.

The rapid rise of the UAW had profound implications for the entire auto industry as other companies, such as Ford, unionized. Membership went from 50,000 to 500,000 members within the next year.

General Motors Workers Return To Work In Flint, Michigan

The Flint sit-down strike was a significant event in the evolution of organized labor. As the BBC mentioned:

  "the strike was heard 'round the world".

Now take a look at this great video of footage at the time.

Wounded Knee Massacre

Burial of the dead after the massacre of Wounded Knee. U.S. Soldiers putting Indians in common grave; some corpses are frozen in different positions. South Dakota.

Today this happened in the past: The Wounded Knees Massacre December 29, 1890. 

Wounded Knee Creek (Lakota: Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála) on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

"What's left of Big Foot's band": John Grabill, 1891
John C. H. Grabill - John C. H. Grabill Collection, Library of Congress

The scene three days afterwards, with several bodies partially wrapped in blankets in the foreground.

Buffalo Bill, Capt. Baldwin, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Capt. Moss, and others, on horseback, on battlefield of Wounded Knee.

Frozen corpse on field

San Francisco gets it's first municipally owned streetcars

December 28, 1912, San Francisco gets it's first municipally owned streetcars

The above image shows large crowds gathered Dec. 28, 1912, as Municipal Railway begins service, making public transit history. Photo: Chronicle Archive Photo / SF

In this undated file photo, a cable car is turned on Powell Street and Market in San Francisco. San Francisco Chronicle

 

 

 

A worker repairs the cable car tracks.

1940's Market Street at Geary

20 Streetcars are visible in this 1939 picture at Market, Geary and Kearny streets.

Carolers sing on a cable car in San Francisco on Dec. 23, 1946.

Mae West is Banned from NBC Radio in 1930's Censorship

Mae West Banned from NBC Radio in 1930's Censorship

December 27, 1937

Before television, there was radio for entertainment at home. Shows as The Jack Benny Program, Lone Ranger, and The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were big hits. The entertainment included musicals, comedy, soap operas, and about anything you would see on television today; well...almost anything as we shall see in the Mae West story; a story about morality standards of the 1930's through the 1950's.

We have come out of our morality coma today as compared to the 1930's entertainment standards. Some would say we have gone far too far to the other side of the regulating pendulum.  But as you read on and even listen to the segment below I think you will agree, what happened to Ms. West is pretty laughable even to the most prudish today.

Mae West was a vaudeville actress and eventually moved to Hollywood where she became one of America's greatest actresses.  West was a comedian, actress, and a writer in the motion picture industry. She played in countless films and radio programs.

Mae West is known for her sexual innuendos and double entendre—or phrases that have double meaning—that brought sex out of the closet.

In 1937 a December skit on the Chase and Sanborn Hour Mae
West and 1930's morality all collided with the end result of Ms. West being banned from NBC radio. She would not do radio again until 1950.

The comedy and variety program was sponsored by Chase and Sandborn Coffee and was a popular show and in those days, it was also the public and the sponsors who flagged shows content if it went over the 1930's morality limits; and one thing is for sure, if anyone could go over that limit it was Mae West.

The Chase and Sandborn show were built around two segments and in this program, Don Ameche along with West was placed by radio magic in the Garden of Eden. Ameche played Adam and West Eve in a reversal of how we would remember the original story. Eve seduces the serpent so she and Adam could "leave this dump" and find some excitement outside of the garden.

The second segment is a dialogue between Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen’s famous ventriloquist doll, and Mae West. This is where the innuendo is cranked up by West and has some great lines as:

“come on home with me, honey. I’ll let you play in my wood pile”

It helps the joke to know that Charlie McCarthy is made of wood.  And one other pun where West tells McCarthy that she...

..."likes the smell of burning wood."

All in great fun, right?

Mae West, Charlie McCarthy, and Edgar Bergen, 1937

Apparently not to the Legion of Decency founded by the Roman Catholic Church, the Legion of Decency from other denominations that supported their mission of combating “indecency and propaganda”, and the Women’s National Radio Committee that kept an eye, or an ear, on radio programming to make sure “Christian values” were being maintained. 

In an editorial, one of the aforementioned wrote this:

“The home is our last bulwark against the modern over-emphasis on sensuality, and we cannot see why Miss West and others of her ilk should be permitted to pollute its precincts with shady stories, foul obscenity, smutty suggestiveness, and horrible blasphemy." 

The  FCC (Federal Communication Commission) even opened an investigation and censured the network. But NBC fought back and pointed the finger directly at Mae West arguing that is was not the content that was the problem but the way West's used her tone and the style of her performance that caused the issue.

This argument by the network did not go down well with everyone. The
Chicago Daily News, as an example: 

“NBC and the commercial sponsors of the program knew Mae West. They knew her technique. They'd heard her and seen her. They coached her in rehearsals. But when the public protests swamped them they pretended they had Mae all mixed up with Mary Pickford or Shirley Temple.”

 So it goes with the beginnings of cultural censorship of the1930's and further as it set the tone for the next few decades. The reformers, jubilant in their win over West, continued to work to tighten regulations as they met with religious groups, sponsors, and the FCC marginalizing the millions of Americans who held a more tolerant view.

So you decide, here are the two segments, listen to them both...enjoy!

 

The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" are released in the United States

US picture sleeve Capitol Records

Decemeber26, 1963 Capitol Records released I Want to Hold Your Hand and I Saw Her Standing There in the United States

We usually equate the Beatles popularity in America to their Ed Sullivan Show appearance in January 1964. But, it was really the release of these two singles which started Beatlemania in the US, and for that matter, the whole world.

Capitol Records, a subsidiary of EMI, resisted releasing any Beatles recordings in America even though the release of I want to Hold Your Hand in the UK was phenomenal staying on top of the British Charts for weeks.

Capitol was finally convinced by pressure from EMI and  Brian Epstein the Beatles manager and the stage was set for the rock and roll phenomena which was about to begin.

Brian Epstein asked and received $40,000 from Capitol, instead of the $5,000 or less, to promote the new songs in the States.

The original idea was to release the tunes to coincide with the Ed Sullivan show in January of the next year. But, greatness can never be planned as fate would require the hot new songs to be released earlier.

A young girl (age 14) named Marsha Albert, a big fan, was on a mission to get the new single earlier and doggedly pushed deejay Carroll James of WWDC in Washington, DC to play the UK singles.

Carroll gave in and managed to get a single copy from Brittian and even asking young Marsha to introduce the record with: "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the United States, here are the Beatles singing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.'"

Capitol upon hearing about the underground airplay of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" threatened court action to stop it. No one blinked and Capitol decided to let fate rule the day, and of course all the free publicity since the release was a huge hit.

And the rest is history, the British invasion began and Beatlemania took over America.

 The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, 9th February 1964, performing "I Want To Hold Your Hand"

Andrew Johnson grants amnesty to Southern States

Today this happened in the past

December 25, 1868, US President Andrew Johnson grants an unconditional pardon to all persons involved in the Civil War.

President Johnson, the 17th president of the United States was an interesting fellow who assumed the office after the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865. Johnson was a Democrat as opposed to Lincoln, a Republican, and served in the Tennesse legislature, as a US Congressmen, and also became the governor of Tennessee. An interesting note about Johnson was that he was loyal to the Union even though he was a Southern Senator. He was also a great champion of States rights which made him an unusual politician at the time of the Southern Rebellion.

As president Johnson set out to unify the Union once again by granting amnesty to most of the Confederates and even allowing them to elect their own governments.  These actions caused cause quite a stir with the Radical Republicans since many of the newly elected officials created new "black codes" meant to once again suppress the newly freed slaves. Congress refused to seat these newly Southen elected officials and this set the stage for the animosity between Johnson and Congress.

Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon

Today this happened in the past

December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon the first for humans.

According to Wikipedia:  

"Taken by Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, at mission time 075:49:07 (16:40 UTC), while in orbit around the Moon, showing the Earth rising for the third time above the lunar horizon."

It is also the first time "Earthrise" entered into our vocabulary.  

Additionally from Wikipedia:

 "Apollo 8, the second human spaceflight mission in the United States Apollo space program, was launched on December 21, 1968, and became the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Earth's Moon, orbit it and return safely to Earth. The three-astronaut crew—Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders—became the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit, the first to see Earth as a whole planet, the first to directly see the far side of the Moon, and then the first to witness Earthrise. The 1968 mission, the third flight of the Saturn V rocket and that rocket's first manned launch, was also the first human spaceflight launch from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, located adjacent to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station."

Apollo 8 crew is photographed posing on a Kennedy Space Center (KSC) simulator in their space suits. From left to right are James A. Lovell Jr., William A. Anders, and Frank Borman.

Watching humans circle the Moon for the first time during Apollo 8, Christmas Eve 1968.

New York City Blizzard of 1947

Caption from LIFE: A snowbound automobile stands right in the middle of New York City's West 22nd Street between a long line of other cars buried at the curb.Andreas Feininger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images



According to Life Magazine LIFE in its Jan. 5, 1948, issue:

"At 3:20 in the morning it began to snow in New York City. By the time most New Yorkers were going to work the blanket lay three inches deep. But the city, used to ignoring all natural phenomena and reassured by a weather forecast of “occasional flurries,” went about its business. But as the day wore on this characteristic blasé attitude vanished. The air grew filled with snowflakes so huge and thick it was almost impossible to see across the street. They fell without letup — all morning, all afternoon and into the night.
Long after night fall the illuminated news sign of the New York Times flashed an announcement to little groups of people huddled in Times Square that the snowfall, which totaled an amazing 25.8 inches in less than 24 hours, had beaten the record of the city’s historic blizzard of 1880. A faint, muffled shout of triumph went up from the victims."

Manhattan snow storm, 1947, photo by Al Fenn for the New York Daily News

Digging out the car; a scene from New York City's historic blizzard of 1947. Associated Press

F4U-1 Corsair fighter

F4U-1 Corsair fighter of US Navy squadron VF-17 landing on USS Charger, February 1943.

What a great image as the pilot catches the wire. You can feel the plane's mass coming to a quick stop as the harness starts digging into the aviator's shoulders as he struggles to keep his head upright.

Taken from: About Education

In September 1942, new issues arose with the Corsair when it underwent carrier qualification trials. Already a difficult aircraft to land, numerous problems were found with its main landing gear, tail wheel and tailhook. As the Navy also had the F6F Hellcat coming into service, the decision was made to release the Corsair to the US Marine Corps until the deck landing problems could be resolved. First arriving in the Southwest Pacific in late 1942, the Corsair appeared in larger numbers over the Solomons in early 1943.
Marine pilots quickly took to the new aircraft as its speed and power gave it a decisive advantage over the Japanese A6M Zero. Made famous by pilots such as Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington (VMF-214), the F4U soon began to rack up impressive kill numbers against the Japanese. The fighter was largely restricted to the Marines until September 1943, when the Navy began flying it in larger numbers. It was not until April 1944, that the F4U was fully certified for carrier operations. As Allied forces pushed through the Pacific the Corsair joined the Hellcat in protecting US ships from kamikaze attacks.

 F4U Corsair taking off from USS Boxer during the Korean War, 1951.

This happened today in the past December 23

Today this happened in the past
Dec. 23, 1913, is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System.

Second Class Saloon

Second Class Saloon; The saloon that Wyatt Earp and his wife owned in Nome, Alaska between 1887-1901

This happened today in the past December 21

This happened today in the past
Snow White premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater On December 21, 1937

Today this happened in the past December 22

Today this happened in the past
December 22, 1964, the SR-71 Blackbird makes its maiden flight. The Mach 3.3 spy plane could fly at 85,000 ft.

This happened today in the past December 20

This happened today in the past December 20, 1946...

The popular Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life is first released in New York City