Good News in History, July 14

On this day in 1912, Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. The folk singer and songwriter who traveled with farmers displaced during the Dust Bowl, became famous for writing “This Land Is Your Land.” He was a major influence on Bruce Springsteen and the young Bob Dylan, whom he mentored before he died in 1967. Woody’s protest songs were often performed on his guitar decorated with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists. WATCH Woody perform below… 

This Land Is Your Way had never been sung on radio or TV or recorded by a famous performer, but some children’s school songbooks printed it and it was so well received that within a decade millions of people knew the words and could sing along… Guthrie also is the father of folk musician, Arlo Guthrie (who did Alice’s Restaurant, and Coming Into Los Angeles).

MORE Good News on this Day:

• In Joplin, Missouri, the George Washington Carver National Monument became the first United States National Monument in honor of an African-American (1943)
• Elvis Costello and The Attractions made their live debut at The Garden, in Cornwall, England (1977)
• The movie premiere of Pink Floyd’s The Wall was held at The Empire, Leicester Square, London, England (1982)
• David Lange led his Labor party to a landslide victory in New Zealand by promising to ban nuclear weapons and establish the world’s first and only nuclear-free nation, which, as Prime Minister three years later, he did (1984)
• The Peach Festival in South Carolina broke the world record for the most guitarist performing in unison for the longest period of time, when 432 guitarists played ‘Louie Louie’ for 30 minutes (1989)
• Duped financial clients who lost millions in the largest Ponzi scheme ever got to feel some vindication when Bernard Madoff arrived at a federal prison to begin serving a 150-year sentence (2009)
• And, Happy 36h Birthday to Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor, who needed only 13 seconds to become the Featherweight Champion in 2015, setting the record for the fastest title victory in history (1988)

41 years ago today, an arcade game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokoi featured a pair of Italian brothers—Mario and Luigi, sent to investigate the sewers of New York City after strange creatures began appearing down there. The game, entitled Mario Bros. became a new 4-decade long saga of reboots beloved by two generations of gamers which have featured Mario and Luigi as everything from tennis players and golfers to superheroes and street cleaners.

Having already created the idea of an Italian plumber protagonist in their 1981 game Donkey Kong (though he was originally thought of as a carpenter) they needed another character for the multiplayer version, for which they simply did a color swap from red to green, thus creating Luigi.

The game was a moderate success at first, selling 2,000 arcade machines in the US. The idea of staging the action inside a sewer was based on several manga, and therefore the change from carpenter to plumber made sense.

A legend has it that while in development, an Italian New York City landlord burst in on Nintendo’s American office demanding rent in a very Italian way, and so the red plumber was called Mario in his honor. Subsequent re-releases of the Mario Bros. format sold millions of cartridges in the early console days. (1983)

9 years ago today, Earth’s scientists completed the first survey of our solar system as the New Horizons spacecraft completed a flyby of distant Pluto. It took ten years for the little space probe to arrive at our most distant neighbor, and is now beginning a long cold journey out into the great beyond, never to return. Along with Pluto, New Horizons also imaged its moons of Nix, Styx, Kerberos, Charon, and Hydra.

The closest approach of the New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto occurred on July 14, 2015, at a range of 12,472 km (7,750 mi) from the surface. The first details of the encounter were received the next day, but the download of the complete data set through the 2 kilobytes per second data downlink took just over 15 months.

Along with photographs of Pluto and its moons, data from New Horizons was able to provide insight about many interesting details of Pluto’s history, including the phenomenon of “cryovolcanism.” After passing Pluto and taking 15 months to send the 6 gigabytes of data from the encounter, the New Horizons team requested, and received, a mission extension through 2021 to explore additional Kuiper belt objects (KBOs), like  486958 Arrokoth.

After the spacecraft’s passage by Arrokoth, the instruments continue to have sufficient power to be operational until the 2030s. Team leader Alan Stern stated there is potential for a third flyby in the 2020s at the outer edges of the Kuiper belt. (2016)

64 years ago today, Jane Goodall first arrived at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania to begin her ground-breaking study of chimpanzees in the wild.

Later that year, immersed in their forest community, the beloved British primatologist first observed the chimps creating tools for fetching termites—the first time that an animal was observed to modify an object to create a tool for a specific purpose. A mere secretary before she arrived, she was given a grant to study at Cambridge where she earned a PhD studying primate behavior and anatomy.

Dr. Jane Goodall (pictured above in 2018) posited an unconventional idea: “It isn’t only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow.”

A trailblazing researcher at Gombe, she later established the Jane Goodall Institute, inspired generations across the world, breaking gender barriers in science, and spurred a global movement of compassion toward animals. WATCH a 60th-anniversary tribute… (1960)

Also on this day 106 years ago, the renowned Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was born. Portraying the consciousness and emotions surrounding death, the church, family, betrayal, and agony, Bergman directed over 60 films (most of which he also wrote), including the influential Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), The Silence (1963), Persona (1966), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), and Fanny and Alexander (1982).

He first saw the film Black Beauty at age six and it affected him deeply, keeping him in bed speechless for days. At nine, he got a toy projector and created his own puppets and a theater, living some of the happiest years of his life before being subjected to the harsh rules of a conservative, minister father. Ironically, the stark and austere Swedish filmmaker was a huge fan of Ghostbusters, Sex in the City, and The Muppets, which produced a famous parody of his style.

Notoriously averse to any of Hollywood’s advances, he did eventually make films in English (The Touch and The Serpent’s Egg) and work with American actors (Elliott Gould and David Carradine, respectively), but mostly stayed true to his artistic vision from his homes in Sweden and Germany.

When asked in his old age to name his demons, Bergman—one of the greatest artists of the 20th century—admitted to a long list of them, including fear, crowds, rage, and regimentation, but the worst of them he called the “Demon of Disaster”. Always in a high state of disaster preparedness, he imagined that everything he did in a day, everything he planned for that day onwards, would go terribly wrong.

In 2004, Bergman emptied his apartment in Stockholm and his room at the theater where he produced dozens of plays, and retreated to his beloved Fårö (the island where he wrote his scripts and filmed many of his most famous movies), never to venture forth again. He died there at age 89, three years later, instructing his nine children to sell everything at auction. Fortunately for the world, they disregarded his wishes. (1918)

And, on this day in 1969, the seminal counter-culture film Easy Rider was released in theaters. Peter Fonda co-wrote the script and co-starred with Dennis Hopper portraying hippie bikers on a cross-country road trip riding high on the proceeds from a drug deal. On a shoestring budget of $400,000, and a break-out role for the unknown actor Jack Nicholson, the film directed by Hopper would gross $60 million and ultimately kickstart a new golden era of independent American filmmakers in the seventies including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman.

The role earned Jack Nicholson an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor and the tragic tale was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, while its ‘ground-breaking’ soundtrack featured The Band, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, and Steppenwolf. WATCH the trailer…

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