1652 Table Bay (SA), History: The first permanent European settlement in South Africa was established by the Dutch East India company under Jan van Riebeeck. We saw a photograph of a wall built by these settlers in an exhibition recently.
1841 DC, Politics: The first Vice President to succeed a president who died in office took was sworn in. That was John Tyler. Elected President General William Harrison died one month after his inauguration. A biography of Tyler, the accidental president, is discussed elsewhere on the blog. Wits referred to him as ‘His Accidency.’ Suffice it to say here he was a president whose party had disowned him when he accepted the place as Vice President on the ticket with no personal following or profile, and he was, and knew he was, on a one-way ticket. Here’s one for the books, twenty years later he served as a congressman in the Confederate House of Representatives where he tired to promote negotiations, and failed.
1896 Athens, Sports: The Olympic Games were reborn when 60,000 spectators gathered to watch 280 athletes from thirteen nations. Baron Pierre de Coubertin had started promoting the idea in 1892. Thereafter the Olympics were overshadowed by world’s fairs and then lost to World War I. The first successful Olympics (participation, income, and publicity) were held in 1924 in Paris, which included 400 women athletes.
1903 Paris, Politics: The tissue of lies fabricated by the Pox News of the day against Captain Alfred Dreyfus collapsed when secret documents were published that revealed his innocence. Robert Harris’s novel ‘An Officer and a Spy’ about this case is discussed in a post elsewhere on this blog. On the blogosphere there are many who are sure either Dreyfus or Hillary did it.
1968 Surrey (England), Entertainment: ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ screened. Pauline Kael, the New Yorker’s pontificator on movies said it was ‘monumentally unimaginative.’ Yes she did, HAL. The child bride has sung to it in a chorus.
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