I went on and on at great length about my friend Helen way back in August over the 20th anniversary of us meeting for the first time. But today is her birthday. Her age? As always, it’s impolite to disclose a woman’s age, you’ll have to ask her. I’m sure Helen’s birthday will be eventful as her two sons (TJ age 7 and Jack age 5) have something pretty nice planned with a generous amount of assistance from their dad, Paul.
Meanwhile, according the History Channel’s website, Helen’s birthday is quite an eventful day for the world. She shares her birthday with Dwight Eisenhower and designer Ralph Lauren. May explain Helen’s strong sense of style and good taste but I’ve never known her to like polo, golf or Mamie. Show business birthdays are a mixed bag with Roger Moore (the third James Bond and the first Saint), UK pop star Cliff Richard (most people here would know him from being the butt of jokes on the BritCom The Young Ones), Magician-Comedian Harry Anderson and genre actress Lori Petty (star of Tank Girl, Livewire from the Superman cartoon and an alien on an episode of Star Trek:Voyager).
Nine hundred and forty years ago, William the Conqueror’s forces defeated King Harold II’s army at the Battle of Hastings (actually seven miles away from the city) which ended Anglo-Saxon rule over England and began the Norman period. Gradually the Norman French of the royal court would mix with the Anglo-Saxon tongue of the “native” residents to become modern English.
Nine centuries later, Edward Noble buys NBC’s blue network to form ABC in 1943. ABC is now the centerpiece of Disney’s media empire which extends into ESPN and ABC Family. It was the network to watch when Helen and I were kids in the Seventies with Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, Mork & Mindy, Starsky & Hutch and Taxi. Hard to believe the network also showed “controversial” programs such as Soap and SWAT. Pretty tame thanks to Fox, HBO and Showtime’s content today.
The coolest event on Helen’s birthday is US Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager becoming the first person to break the sound barrier in an experimental rocket plane circa 1947. Sadly, it was kept a secret for almost a year, deferring his fame until the movie version of Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff hit theaters in 1983.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 while Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev is ousted from power. Contrary to popular myth, Kruschev did not get the boot over the Cuban Missile Crisis because the Soviet Union gained something they wanted in the settlement but kept quiet about it at JFK’s request; the removal of outdated missiles pointed at them from Turkey and Italy. The blustery Kruschev lost his gig over a failed irrigation project that cost a fortune. That’s one of the nuggets of trivia I remembered from our Marquette history professor Father Donnelly.