1682 Versailles, History: Louis XIV moved the royal court to the palace at Versailles. It took twenty years to build this palace. Its purpose was to impress and in that it succeeds. Been there once long ago. No pictures do it justice. Below is one shot of the Galerie des glaces.
1940 San Francisco, Literature. John Steinbeck’s novel ‘The Grapes of Wraith’ was award the Pulitzer Prize in literature. Read it.
1954 Oxford, Sports: Roger Banister broke the four-minute mark for the mile run. Many talking heads had said it was not humanly possible to run a mile in under four minutes. He became obsessed with breaking this barrier after he had been scorned for not going to the 1948 London Olympics because he had examinations in his medical degree at the time. Many years later Banister said that he found running a powerful source of self-expression. Georg Hegel would understand that.
1992 Fulton, Missouri, Politics: Mikhail Gorbachev spoke at Westminster College to mark the end of the Iron Curtin that Winston Churchill had named at that same podium many years before.
1994 Sangatte (France), Technology: The Channel Tunnel between Folkstone England and Sangatte France, a distance of 31 miles, was officially opened. About 30,000 people pass through it each day. I have been one of them a couple of times.
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