Good News in History, October 13

Happy 90th birthday to the incredible Nana Mouskouri. For those unfamiliar with this goddess of Euro songbirds, she released over 200 albums of songs in 12 languages, including Greek, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese, and Corsican. The Cretan/Athenian songbird became an iconic figure thanks to her jet-black bob and black-rimmed glasses. According to Universal Music Germany, she has sold 250,000,000 albums. READ more and maybe you’ll want to buy a record too… (1934)

In 1950, she was accepted at the Athens Conservatoire. She studied classical music with an emphasis on singing opera. After eight years at the Conservatoire, Mouskouri was encouraged by her friends to experiment with jazz music. She began singing with her friends’ jazz group at night. However, when Mouskouri’s Conservatory professor found out about Mouskouri’s involvement with a genre of music that was not in keeping with her classical studies, he prevented her from sitting for her end-of-year exams.

She began working with songwriter Manos Hadjidakis, who took an interest in her singing of jazz standards.

In 1961, Mouskouri performed the soundtrack of a German documentary about Greece. This resulted in the German-language single Weiße Rosen aus Athen (“White Roses from Athens”). The song was originally adapted by Hadjidakis from a folk melody. It became a success, selling over a million copies in Germany. The song was later translated into several languages and it went on to become one of Mouskouri’s signature tunes.

Her singing voice comes in many different shades, partly because a medical examination as a kid revealed she has only one functioning vocal cord.

She continued to agree to record albums in different languages as varied as French, and Chinese in order to sell to her flourishing market in Taiwan, becoming truly one of the most unique singers in modern history.

MORE Good News on this Day:

• The cornerstone of the White House was laid during a ceremony in the new capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. (1792)
• Ameritech Mobile Communications (now AT&T) launched the first US cellular network in Chicago, Illinois (1983)
• South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to bring peace and reconciliation with North Korea (2000)
• Every one of the 362,000 elementary school students in Uruguay and 18,000 teachers became part of the One Laptop Per Child project, receiving a $100 laptop from the organization set up by Nicholas Negroponte (2009)
• Bob Dylan at 75 years old was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” becoming the first songwriter to win the prestigious award (2016)

121 years ago today, the first modern World Series was played between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston ‘Americans’. In a best-of-nine series, Boston prevailed five games to three, winning the last four. The first three games were played in Boston, the next four in Allegheny (home of the Pirates), and the eighth (last) game in Boston. The series featured some very particular changes that would seem strange to modern sympathies.

Due to overflow crowds at the Exposition Park games in Allegheny City, if a batted ball rolled under a rope in the outfield that held spectators back, a “ground-rule triple” would be scored. 17 ground-rule triples were hit in the four games played at the stadium.

The Pirates’ best pitcher, Sam Leveer, injured his pitching arm, which he had been battling through, but also made worse after he entered a trap shooting competition in the days before Game 1. 16-game winner Ed Doheny, another important player on the roster, left the team in mid-September, exhibiting signs of paranoia; he was committed to an insane asylum the following month.

Much was made of the influence of Boston’s “Royal Rooters”, who traveled to Exposition Park and sang their theme song “Tessie” to distract the opposing players.

With Boston winning, it proved the ability of the newly-conceived American League, leading to the dual-league system carrying on to this day, having been first created for the 1903 season. (1903)

Happy Birthday to musician and singer-songwriter Paul Simon, who turns 83 years old today. He rose to fame with his duo Simon and Garfunkel—a partnership with Art Garfunkel that began when they met in a sixth-grade performance of Alice in Wonderland.

They were soon performing at school dances, and after Simon wrote the song The Sound of Silence, it catapulted them to stardom in 1964. The folk-rock duo reached No.1 on the US album chart in 1968 with the soundtrack to The Graduate, containing the hit Mrs. Robinson, and again in 1970 with their biggest hit, Bridge over Troubled Water, which won five Grammys including Album, Record, and Song of the Year.

As a solo artist, Simon won two more Album of the Year Grammys for Still Crazy After All These Years, and Graceland—an album inspired by South African township music that sold 14 million copies worldwide as his most popular and acclaimed solo work. In 2016, he released Stranger to Stranger, which debuted at number 3 on the Billboard Album Chart and marked his greatest commercial and critical success in thirty years.

As an actor, he played a sleazy producer in Annie Hall, and was a 4-time host of Saturday Night Live—and sang his iconic hit The Boxer for first responders on the show’s first return episode after 9/11.

He announced his touring days were over in 2018, after a career of countless hits that include: Homeward Bound, Scarborough Fair, American Tune, Kodachrome, Loves Me Like A Rock, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, Mother and Child Reunion, Cecilia, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, Slip Slidin’ Away, Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes, Late in the Evening, and You Can Call Me Al.

Simon co-founded the Children’s Health Fund, which created specially equipped buses to take medical care to children in underserved urban and rural areas—and now operates in 12 states, partnering with hospitals, medical students, and public schools providing kids with health care. WATCH an amazing Simon interview by Wynton Marsalis… (1941)

30 years ago today, Northern Ireland reached the precipice of peace after the three main loyalist paramilitary groups announced a ceasefire in Belfast in response to a similar truce by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) seven weeks earlier. After 25 years of civil unrest, the declaration was hailed by political leaders on all sides. The Irish Prime Minister said the announcement marked the ‘“closure of a tragic chapter in our history”. (1994)

And on this day in 1843, Henry Jones and 11 others founded B’nai B’rith in New York City—the oldest Jewish service organization in the world. The new group’s constitution called for: “Visiting and attending the sick” and “protecting and assisting the widow and the orphan.”

Since 1865, it has also assisted victims of natural and manmade disasters—from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, to the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Just six weeks after the signing of the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978, B’nai B’rith was the first Jewish group to visit that Arab country at the invitation of President Anwar Sadat. It also is involved in politics, combats anti-semitism, advocates for health care and social security, and sponsors housing for Jewish seniors with its network of 36 residence buildings in over 27 cities.

Also on this day, 14 years ago, 33 Chilean miners trapped deep underground for a record 69 days made the 17-minute journey to the surface, one by one, after surviving the best they could until the international team of rescuers were able to drill a passage and provide an escape pod. Never had anyone been rescued from such a depth—more than a third of a mile (622 meters) underground. (2010)

The world was glued to their television screens for two months as engineers worked to devise a plan, and NASA provided the pod that would lift them to the surface. You can read more of the details of this historic rescue on our GNN story from 2010.

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