Good News in History September 27

Happy 48th Birthday to Il Capitano—Francesco Totti. The most iconic Italian football forward of the 21st century, Totti spent a 25-year professional career in the red and orange on the AS Roma team—and is remembered as one of the greatest players of his generation. In 619 appearances for Roma he scored 250 goals, the second most of any player in the history of Italian football, and won a single Serie A title, two Coppa Italia titles, and two Supercoppa Italiana titles. For Italy, he was crowned a world champion in the 2006 FIFA World Cup after playing a pivotal attacking role in all seven games. READ more about Roma’s greatest player… (1976)

As a young man playing for Roma, the supporters quickly latched on to Francesco Totti’s elegant playing style and the fact that he was born in the Porta Metronia neighborhood of central Rome, and was as native as the Colosseum.

At the turn of the millennium, Roma coach Fabio Capello aimed to build a team around Totti who by then had been given the number 10 shirt—the most important in association football. It paid off, and Rome won their only league title of the century at the time of publishing.

Totti exploded into a superstar, scoring 10 or more league goals in 9 consecutive seasons that decade, and passed 20 in all competitions on 4 occasions. Known for his vision, passing, and powerful running ability, he was affectionately known as Il Capitano and Il Gladiatore. 

Quick to use his David Beckham-like fame for good, Totti is also an international ambassador of Goodwill for UNICEF, In 2009, Totti helped launch a new campaign promoting Football Adopting Abandoned Children in which he adopted a team of around eleven young Kenyans to play football in Nairobi, and then to coach them along the way.

Legendary Italian manager Carlo Ancelotti, against whose title-winning teams Totti played many times but never for, said of the Roma captain “Totti is immortal and he is a symbol of our sport. I only regret not having worked with him.” WATCH his best goal against Inter Milan…

MORE Good News on this Day:

• Jean-François Champollion announced that he had deciphered the Rosetta stone (1822)
• The world’s first public railway for steam locomotives, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, was ceremonially opened (1825)
• Production began at the Ford automobile plant and the first Model T was built in Detroit, Michigan (1908)
• Jordan‘s King Hussein and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed a ceasefire at an Arab summit in Egypt after 10 days of bitter civil war in Jordan (1970)
• Google was founded as a new search engine (1998)

301 years ago today, the Founding Father Samuel Adams was born. Born in Massachusetts, he was at the center of colonial non-cooperation against the British in America, beginning with his Circular Letters. He was actively involved in colonial newspaper publishing before heading to Philadelphia to guide the issuing of the Colonial Association, the Declaration of Independence, and was a drafter of the Articles of Confederation. A skilled orator and patriot, he spent much of his time post-Revolution promoting virtue, believing Republican government couldn’t survive without it.

Second cousin to John Adams, Samuel was at the center of every political and economic crisis that led up to the revolution, and scholars debate whether it was his command that set off the Boston Tea Party, as he was having a large meeting of 7,000 people to protest the Tea Act at the time.

Adams was the Massachusetts delegate appointed to the committee to draft the Articles of Confederation, the plan for the colonial confederation. With its emphasis on state sovereignty, the Articles reflected Congress’s wariness of a strong central government, a concern shared by Adams.

Upon returning to Massachusetts, Adams was appointed to a three-man drafting committee with his cousin John Adams and James Bowdoin. They drafted the Massachusetts Constitution, which was amended by the convention and approved by voters in 1780. The new constitution established a republican form of government, with annual elections and a separation of powers. It reflected Adams’s belief that “a state is never free except when each citizen is bound by no law whatever that he has not approved of, either directly, or through his representatives”. (1722)

203 years ago today, the army that built a successful coalition during the Mexican War of Independence took control in Mexico City, decisively defeating Spain to secure independence for Mexico. One of the generals, Agustín de Iturbide, was later proclaimed president of Mexico, and he also designed the current Mexican flag.

The country celebrates independence, however, on September 16, because eleven years earlier, in 1810, a few American-born Spaniards in favor of independence began plotting the uprising against Spanish rule. The moment was marked when the Dolores village priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, issued a call to arms by ringing the church bells, forever known as the Cry of Dolores. (1821)

Happy 52nd Birthday to actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who rose to worldwide fame after her Academy Award-winning performance in Shakespeare in Love. She has starred in the Iron Man film franchise, written cookbooks, and launched a lifestyle website called Goop. (1972)

And, on this day in 1988, the now-Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi co-founded the first social-democratic political party in Myanmar (Burma). After two decades of being banned by the military junta from holding any political office, The National League for Democracy finally, in 2012, won 43 of the 45 available seats in Parliament, paving the way for the country’s first non-military president in 54 years. Devoted to freedom and non-violence, Aung San Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest for 15 years but emerged, as leader of her newly-victorious party and in the 2015 general election, the NLD won a supermajority in both houses of the Assembly.

Also, on this day in 2011, Tony Bennett became the oldest living person to top the US album chart when the 85-year-old’s Duets II LP went to No.1. The record, which featured collaborations with Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga, was also the first US No.1 of his 60-year career. You can check out all of Tony Bennett’s Duets albums on Amazon…

And, 70 years ago today, The Tonight Show, now the longest currently-running entertainment program in America, debuted LIVE on black-and-white televisions on NBC.

Regularly scheduled Monday through Friday since 1954, the series has been hosted by six comedians, debuting with Steve Allen, who then passed the baton to Jack Paar, then Johnny Carson—who hosted for 30 years.

Jay Leno, one of Johnny’s favorite guest hosts, took over after his retirement and, after an 8-month stint by Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon hosted the talk show for the next decade. Totaling more than 12,414 episodes, the show followed the nightly local news, and launched the careers of comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Joan Rivers, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Allen, Drew Carey, and Roseanne Barr. WATCH highlights of the first 50 years of NBC Late Night… (1954)

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