October Anniversaries
Momentous or Merely Memorable
- By Allison McLean
- Smithsonian magazine, October 2008, Subscribe
25 Years Ago
Medical Emergency
After a Marxist coup on the socialist Caribbean nation of Grenada, President Ronald Reagan orders U.S. troops to invade the island on October 25, 1983, citing fears for the safety of American medical students there and an arms buildup. Critics call the concerns exaggerated. The action is popular in the United States, but condemned abroad.
50 Years Ago
Charge It
Dr. Ake Senning performs the first cardiac pacemaker implantation in a person in Stockholm, Sweden, October 8, 1958. External pacemakers, used to regulate heart rhythms since 1950, limited patient movement and provoked infection. Senning and engineer Rune Elmquist, at work on an implantable model, are urged by the wife of patient Arne Larsson, 43, to try it in her husband. The first implant lasts eight hours, the next, a few weeks. Before his death at 86 in 2001, Larsson will have more than 20 pacemakers. Senning dies in 2000, age 85.
70 Years Ago
We Interrupt Our Program
Orson Welles, 23, and the Mercury Theatre inspire panic October 30, 1938, when thousands mistake their radio version of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds for news of a Martian attack on New Jersey. Listeners across the country, perhaps tense over impending war in Europe, phone for help—Newark police report 2,000 calls. Says Welles: “I'm really quite shocked.”
100 Years Ago
America's Top Model
It isn't his first car and won't be his last, but the Model T, which Henry Ford introduces in October 1908, secures his place in automobile history. The first car to be mass-produced with standardized parts, the four-cylinder, 20-horsepower vehicle sells initially for $850. The assembly line—new in 1913—turns out a Model T every 71 seconds, and by production's end in 1927 more than 15 million "Tin Lizzies" are sold, fulfilling Ford's dream of "a motor car for the great multitude."
125 Years Ago
Putting on Arias
The curtain rises on the first performance of New York City's Metropolitan Opera on October 22, 1883. Founded by "new money" millionaires snubbed by the old guard at the Academy of Music, the Opera opens with Gounod's Faust—sung in Italian, as are all the first season's works. Critics note the lavish "exhibition of the audience" and pan the acoustics, but by 1910 the Met has become America's premier opera company. It moves to Lincoln Center in 1966; today more than 800,000 people attend some 200 performances each year.
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Comments (1)
I always like to see what's happened in history. But, especially in October, my Birthday month. I'm 57 years young this month. I've seen many changes over these short years. It's fascinating and thrilling to see it. As a teacher, though, It's been hard to find our youth pulling away from what the past has taught us and using it to help us learn today. They tend to find it boring, or not needed to be a member of a "gang". It breaks my heart to find the young generation loosing touch with the past. They need the Smithsonian more today than ever before. Keep pushing for educational inroads with what you have to share. Keep making it relevant for today and the future! Your magazine is one that I like to take time and devour in the late hours and then share with students. Pictures are always needed/maybe poster size would help...Anyway, keep it up!!
Posted by Karen Elston on October 16,2008 | 07:38 PM