1882 Barcelona, Architecture: The first stone of the Sagrada Familia cathedral was laid. It is said today that in another twenty years it might be finished, or so we were told in 2018. It is an astonishing building and the story of Antonio Gaudi is even more compelling. Been there, seen that. We thought we were cathedraled-out until we got here. It is breathtaking in and out and like nothing else I have ever seen.
1931 Carson City, Politics: Nevada legalised gambling in a bid to overcome the Depression. In the next year it legislated the easiest divorce laws in the United States to add divorce-tourism to gambling-tourism. Now as then gambling taxes are the bulk of the state’s income. It also got gangster-tourism in 1959 when organised crime left Havana and found a new headquarters.
1932 Sydney, Transportation: The ribbon was cut to open the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Francis Edward de Groot put in an appearance. Later the Governor-General dismissed the elected premier of New South Wales for defaulting on repayments on loans to British banks to build the Bridge in the Great Depression. Was there any connection between the two events? Speculation on this subject has been the subject of many works of fact and fiction and some in which they authors make no such distinction. Been over that bridge many a time.
1966 College Park (MD), Sports: An unheralded Texas Western University basketball team defeated Adolph Rupp’s University of Kentucky dynasty in the NCAA national championship game. It was a 10:1 upset win for the Miners from Texas Western. Miner Coach Don Haskins violated the unwritten rule and started five black players against Rupp’s all-white aristocrats of the Blue Grass. Rupp had never had a black player on his many teams and intended to keep it that way. (See ‘Glory Road’ (2006) for an entertaining interpretation of this game.) At that time no college, no professional team had ever started an all black line up, regardless of ability or context, in any sport, still less in a nationally televised championship game before a sold-out lily white audience in a gymnasium in the south. Haskins knew the unwritten rule, but he wanted his team to win and after discussion with all the players (because they — black and white — would bear the brunt of the reaction) he put his best five on the floor, and they won 72 – 65. The Kentucky team included future NBA stars Pat Riley, Louie Dampier, and Larry Conely. None of the Miners made it to the NBA.
1991 Tempe (AZ), Sports: When Arizona refused to recognise Martin Luther King Day, National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue terminated an agreement to hold the 1993 Super Bowl in Phoenix and moved it to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Arizona Senator John McClain had campaigned for a referendum to accept MLK day but not even his prestige prevailed. The reaction in Arizona was one of outraged innocence while Phoenix lost an estimated $100 million in revenue. What do NFL Commissioners do these days?
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