1865 William and Catherine Booth started an organisation that developed into the Salvation Army in 1878. It exists today in 128 countries working in 175 languages. In addition to the uniforms, it has a system of ranks, a flag, the red shield, a tartan, the Red Kettle, the bell, and publications.
1900 Jean Sibelius’s ‘Finlandia’ debuted in Helsinki while Finland was a Grand Duchy ruled by the Russian Tsar. Because of its celebration of Finnish history, to avoid Russian censorship and reaction it was thereafter often performed under other titles like Happy Feelings on a Spring Day or a Choral March. In 1940 it was made the Finnish national anthem and libretto supplied during the Winter War with Russia. Seen the Sibelius monument in Helsinki.
1922 Oslo, Politics. Fridtjof Nansen convened the Intergovernmental Conference on Identify Certificates for the League of Nations, creating the Nansen passport for stateless refugees until 1938. Among those who had one were Robert Capa, Marc Chagall, Vladimir Nabokov, Aristotle Onassis, Anna Pavlova, and Igor Stravinsky. Today the UN and some countries issue certificates of identity to stateless persons.
1962 Bentonville, AK, Commerce. Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store. There are more than 11,000 stores in 27 countries with 2.2 million employees turing over $US 500 billion a year. It all started in the store pictured below. Been in many of them, most recently in Waikiki.
1964 After quoting the Martin Luther King, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which the previous Kennedy Administration had been unable to get through Congress. Comments on Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of LBJ are scattered through this blog in which the story of LBJ driving members of the House and Senate to vote for it is told with Shakespearean intensity.
Skip to content