Good News in History, August 7

136 years ago today, American inventor Theophilus Van Kannel received a patent for his vision of a seamless and fluid way of entering and exiting buildings: the revolving door. Starting the Van Kannel Revolving Door Company in 1889, his idea was so successful that he was eventually bought out by the International Steel Company which created amphibious landing vehicles for battle tanks for World War II. However, the only remaining vestiges of that company is, in fact, its revolving door division. READ a bit more… (1888)

This simple invention, when laid out by Van Kannel in his patent submission, really becomes quite brilliant. It possesses, he wrote, “numerous advantages over a hinged-door structure … it is perfectly noiseless … effectually prevents the entrance of wind, snow, rain or dust … Moreover, the door cannot be blown open by the wind … there is no possibility of collision, and yet persons can pass both in and out at the same time.”

A year after his patent submission, in 1889, the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia awarded the John Scott Legacy Medal for it, but Van Kannel would have to wait another ten years before the first revolving door was installed at Rector’s, a restaurant on Times Square in Manhattan.

MORE Good News on this Day:

• George Washington established the Purple Heart medal (first called the Badge of Military Merit) as commander of the Continental Army (1782)
• The Peace Bridge opened between Fort Erie, Ontario, and Buffalo, New York, commemorating 100 years of peace between Canada and the U.S. (1927)
• The balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki reached the Tuamotu Islands after Thor Heyerdahl’s 101-day (4375-mile) journey across the Pacific, which proved that prehistoric peoples could have traveled from South America (1947)
• The Quarrymen played at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, and because it was still a jazz club with only some tolerance for skiffle music, when John Lennon dared to play ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, the club owner sent a note to the stage saying, “Cut out the bloody rock!”—but within four years, The Beatles had established themselves as the Club’s signature act (1957)
• NBC aired the final day of the Watergate hearings on U.S. daytime television (1973)
• Philippe Petit performed a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, 1,368 feet (417 m) off the ground (1974)
• After a screaming foul ball critically injured a 4-year-old in Fenway Park, Boston Red Sox player Jim Rice sprinted out of the dugout, scooped him up, and rushed him into the baseball clubhouse “saving the boy’s life” with medical care that was provided in just seconds, before he was rushed to a hospital for surgery to relieve swelling in his brain—a moment immortalized by a photo of Rice cradling the bleeding child, who fully recovered with only a light scar above his left eye. (1982)

8 years ago today, Ichiro Suzuki joined the “3,000 Club” of collecting 3,000 hits across an MLB career in style, hitting a triple off the right-field wall of Coors Field against the Colorado Rockies. In doing so he also became the 7th player in MLB history to hit 3,000 and steal 500 bases in a career—such was his excellence.

On the 15th of June in the same season, Suzuki surpassed Pete Rose for hits as a professional baseball player at 4,257. Pete Rose didn’t appreciate that, noting that soon Japanese fans would be “counting his high school baseball hits,” and arguing that the 1,278 hits he collected during his career in Nippon Professional Baseball shouldn’t count because they came against pitchers of a lower caliber.

Arizona Diamondbacks assistant hitting coach Mark Grace told USA Today he thought it didn’t matter.

“You’re talking about breaking Pete Rose’s record. I couldn’t care less if he got some of those hits in Japan or in Antarctica. You’re getting hits at high professional levels. That’s huge. I’m in awe of the guy.” (2016)

53 years ago today, the Bee Gees reached No.1 on the US singles chart for the first time with How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.

The group’s tenth single on the Billboard Hot 100, it was written by the British brothers Barry and Robin Gibb as they reconvened following a period of break-up and alienation. “Robin came to my place,” says Barry, “and that afternoon we wrote How Can You Mend a Broken Heart and that obviously was a link to us coming back together.”

Featured on the group’s ninth album, Trafalgar, the song was Grammy-nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group. WATCH their 1975 performance… (1971)

And, on this day in 1948, Alice Coachman became the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. The American track and field star won the high jump at the London Games with a leap of 5 ft 6⅛ (1.68m), beating the previous 16-year world record by nearly 3 inches.

Born in Georgia, she ran barefoot as a child along dirt roads near her home, and later dominated the Amateur Athletics high jump championship, winning ten national titles in a row. She also won national titles in the 50-and-100-meter dash and the 400-meter relay team as a student at the Tuskegee Institute (where she also won three conference championships as a guard on their women’s basketball team). Alice was in her prime during WW II when they canceled the 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games—otherwise, according to one sportswriter, “We would probably be talking about her as the No. 1 female athlete of all time.”

Upon her return from the Olympics, Coachman became a celebrity, meeting with President Harry Truman and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She was honored with parades and was thrown a party by Count Basie. In ‘52 she became the first black woman to win an endorsement deal when she was signed by Coca-Cola, who featured her prominently on billboards alongside 1936 Olympic winner Jesse Owens. WATCH a video…

And, Happy 64th Birthday to the multi-talented New Yorker David Duchovny. Best known for playing FBI agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files and also starring in seven seasons of the racy Californication, the two series both earned him Golden Globe awards.

But, he’s also a producer, director, and novelist, and was a studious academic before starting to act in his 30s, calling it “just a happy accident.” Duchovny earned an A.B. in English literature from Princeton University, and an M.A. from Yale, and has since published three books, Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale (2015), Bucky F*cking Dent in 2016, and Miss Subways, an acclaimed novel which in 2018 was dedicated to his 88-year-old mother, featuring a story that actually happened to them when he was a boy, eager to see the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History.

His latest pursuit is as a singer-songwriter recording alternative rock with a band. He released two albums in five years—Hell or Highwater, which debuted in 2015 and his latest Every Third Thought in 2018. Duchovny only began playing guitar four years prior to the album and all of the songs were written in his apartment. He is looking forward to touring in the future after lockdown is eased. WATCH his song Hell Or Highwater… (1960)

And, 205 years ago today, Simón Bolívar triumphed over Spain as a hero in the Battle of Boyacá, the decisive battle that ensured the success of Bolívar’s campaign and the dawn of independence for South America. Credited with leading the fight for independence in areas of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Bolivia, Simón Bolívar is revered as a hero in these countries and throughout much of Latin America. He is one of the few people to have a country named after him (Bolivia).

A great admirer of the American Revolution (and a critic of the French Revolution), Bolívar described himself as a classical “liberal” and defender of the free market economic system.

Simón Bolívar wrote the Bolivian Constitution—and his many speeches and writings revealed him to be an adherent of limited government, the separation of powers, freedom of religion, property rights, and the rule of law. (1819)

Also, on this day in 1981, Good News Network founder Geri Weis-Corbley was sent to cover her first news story as an ENG camera operator for a Washington, DC television news bureau, becoming one of the first females to be assigned a portable news camera in the nation’s capital.

More Notable Birthdays: Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden singer-songwriter, airline pilot, and entrepreneur (65); Garrison Keillor, author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality (81)

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