1888 Amsterdam, Music: The Koninklijk Concertgebouw was inaugurated. Been there, heard that. It is one of the most user friendly concert halls there is. Easy to get in, get around with plenty of plumbing, and get out. Plus the ticket doubles as a public transport pass for the evening and one free drink.
1890 New Jersey, History: The Ellis Island immigration station was established where as many as 12 million entered. By the way, though it lies in New York Harbour it is within the border of the state of New Jersey. Kate has seen it with her own eyes, while I have relied on ‘Brother from Another Planet,’ discussed elsewhere on this blog for my slim knowledge.
1919 Geneva, History: The International Labour Organisation was founded to promote social justice and decent working conditions, partly by setting international labour standards. It has been an agent for collective bargaining, the end of child labour, employment of women, a living wage, free labour, and the like. During World War II its executive decamped Switzerland and worked in exile at McGill University until 1948. The fear of many international organisations in Switzerland was that it would be the next victim of Naziism, or at least forced to compromise in detail with it. Indeed there was a Swiss fascist party the National Front with its partner the New Front that have now been expunged from that country’s history along with much else.
1970 Houston, Space: “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” said Jack Swigert, later repeated by Jim Lovell, on board Apollo 13. The mapping and sample collecting mission changed to survival and re-entry. It led to a re-orientation of the space program to near Earth space with the shuttles. Below is the Apollo 13 Command Module on display at the Smithsonian, which I have seen. Some ride.
1976 The Apple 1 computer went on sale. Yes, they called is the ‘1’ because they already working on the next iteration. So like all computers, it was out of date when it went on sale. The instance below is at the PowerHouse Museum (somewhere) in Sydney. (The parentheses are because the future location of this museum remains vexed.)
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