Good News in History, December 9

140 years ago today, Joseph Pilates, the German-American physical trainer who leant his last name to one of the most popular forms of exercise in the West was born. Pilates came to believe that the “modern” lifestyle, bad posture, and inefficient breathing lay at the roots of poor health. He ultimately devised a series of exercises and training techniques and engineered all the equipment, specifications, and tuning required to teach his methods. It was called Pilates. READ more… (1883)

Pilates was a sickly child. He suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever, and he dedicated his entire life to improving his physical strength. He was introduced by his father to gymnastics and bodybuilding, and to the martial arts like jiu-jitsu and boxing. By the age of 14, he was fit enough to pose for anatomical charts.

Around 1925, Pilates immigrated to the United States. On the ship to America, he met his future wife Clara. The couple founded a studio in New York City and directly taught and supervised their students well into the 1960s.

Joseph Pilates wrote several books, including Return to Life through Contrology and Your Health, and he was also a prolific inventor, with over 26 patents cited. Pilates continued to advocate for and teach his method well into his old age, even once he was physically incapable of performing the exercises himself

MORE Good News on this Date:

• Peru secured its independence by defeating Spanish colonialists (1824)
• UK Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson’s iconic poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, describing a terrible loss during a Crimean War battle, was published in The Examiner (1854)
• In Louisiana, P.B.S. Pinchback (born Pinckney Benton Stewart) became the first African-American to serve as the governor of a U.S. state (1872)
• 69 years ago, Illinois-born actor, director, producer, and fashion designer John Malkovich who has appeared in more than 70 films was born (1953)
• 60s teen idol Donny Osmond, with hits Go Away Little Girl and Puppy Love, and a 2002 Christmas CD, who also won the ninth season of Dancing with the Stars, was born (1957)
• Tanzania gained Independence from Britain (1961)
• Eradication of the smallpox virus was achieved, making smallpox the first, and to date only, human disease driven to extinction (1979)
• Lech Wałęsa became the first directly elected president of Poland winning in a landslide (1990)
• Canada‘s Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was constitutional (2004)

131 years ago today, Newcastle United Football Club was formed. The storied club has spent all but three seasons in England’s highest divison, and enjoys one of the most loyal and committed fanbases in the country. They have won four league titles, and six FA cups, with the most recent coming in 1997, and 1999 respectively. This year the club is enjoying good times—the kind that hasn’t been seen among the clubs of England’s far north for a decade.

Newcastle United have played their home football at St. James Park since 1880, when they were still called Newcastle East End. It’s the 6th largest stadium in the country, and largest in the north.

For many outside England, Newcastle is most associated with one of the most prolific goalscorers the country has ever seen. Alan Shearer grew up in the city, but didn’t get to play for them until he was already the most expensive player in history when Newcastle United paid £15 million for him in 1996.

He would go on to make 308 appearances for his hometown club, scoring 148 goals and finishing his career there. (1892)

58 years ago today, A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered on American television. The first animated special based on the Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz, it was produced on a small budget in six months, using all child actors.

The program’s lack of a laugh track (a staple in TV animation, until that day), in addition to its tone, pacing, and unorthodox jazz soundtrack by pianist Vince Guaraldi, led both the producers and the network to predict the project would be a disaster. But the holiday special won an Emmy and a Peabody and became a beloved annual family broadcast tradition. The jazzy soundtrack LP of Christmas carols and skating ditties, with its theme song Linus and Lucy, sold more than four million copies in the US alone.

In the 22-minute animation, Charlie Brown finds himself depressed despite the holiday season. Lucy suggests he direct a neighborhood Christmas play and pick out a tree for the event, but his best efforts are ignored and mocked by his peers. After Linus tells Charlie Brown about the true meaning of Christmas, it turns things around, and the Peanuts gang decorates the lowly tree, which unites them all in friendship. WATCH the iconic dance number, and read the story’s plot… (1965)

And, Happy Birthday to Dame Judi Dench, one of the greatest actresses of our time who turns 89 today. A Hollywood and theatre legend, the British actress is a seven-time Academy Award nominee who has won a Tony, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globes, and seven Olivier Awards for her tremendous skill on the stage. Her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love won her an Oscar, and she’s become beloved for playing M in two decades of James Bond films.

Her other Oscar-nominated roles were in Mrs Brown, Chocolat, Iris, Mrs Henderson Presents, Notes on a Scandal, and Philomena. See a wider list of roles here.

A couple years ago, she thrilled English brewmasters who named a beer after her—Dame Judi Quench—by throwing back a cold can of the hoppy craft beer created in her home city of York by the people at Brew York. (1934)

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And, on this day 107 years ago, Kirk Douglas, was born in New York to poor immigrant parents. The actor earned three Oscar nominations for his roles in Champion; Bad & the Beautiful; and his 1956 portrayal of Vincent van Gogh (with uncanny resemblance), in Lust For Life.

Acting runs through Douglas’s family–in his son Michael and grandson Cameron–and through his generous heart, with donations of $40 million going to help aging entertainers in need of support. As an author, he wrote ten novels and a memoir. His proudest accomplishment was to help break the Hollywood Blacklist by giving onscreen credit to an accused writer on his 1960 film Spartacus. In his last decades, he had donated $40 million to the Alzheimer’s facility caring for retired actors run by the Motion Picture & Television Fund.

Married 65 years to his wife, Anne Buydens Douglas, he wrote his 12th book with her, entitled Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood. The book features comments on the couple’s secrets to marital longevity and stories of their famous contemporaries like Sinatra, Peck, Wayne, Lancaster, Bacall, and others. (1916-2020)

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