This Day in History

 May 18, 2004:
Randy Johnson throws perfect game at 40



On this day in 2004, 40-year-old Arizona Diamondbacks lefthander Randy Johnson becomes the oldest pitcher in major league history to throw a perfect game, leading his team to a 2-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves. A "perfect game" is when a pitcher faces a minimum 27 batters, recording 27 outs. Through the 2006 season, only 17 perfect games had been thrown, including 15 in the modern era (post-1900).

Johnson, known for his overpowering fastball, struck out 13 batters in the game. He led the National League in strikeouts for the fifth time that year; he had previously won four strikeout titles in the American League, even though managers routinely stacked their lineups with right-handed hitters to combat Johnson’s utter dominance of left-handers. The 6-foot-10-inch "Big Unit" used his height and length to full advantage, striding towards the plate and throwing the ball sidearm, so that left-handers could not see the pitch until it was on top of them or past them.

Johnson had already thrown a no-hitter in 1990 for the Seattle Mariners; he missed a perfect game that day by walking seven batters. In 1995, still with Seattle, he won his first of five Cy Young Awards, given each year to the best American League and National League pitchers. His next four Cy Youngs came consecutively from 1999 to 2002, while he pitched for the National League’s Arizona Diamondbacks. In 2001, Johnson set a major league record with an average of 13.41 strikeouts per nine innings. He was also the fifth player to throw no-hitters in both the American League and National League after Cy Young, Jim Bunning, Nolan Ryan and Hideo Nomo.

The oldest pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the major leagues was 44-year-old Texas Ranger Nolan Ryan in 1991. It was the seventh no-hitter of Ryan’s career. He never threw a perfect game.

This Day in History

May 17, 1974:
LAPD raid leaves six SLA members dead

In Los Angeles, California, police surround a home in Compton where the leaders of the terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) are hiding out. The SLA had kidnapped Patricia Hearst, of the fabulously wealthy Hearst family publishing empire, months earlier, earning headlines across the country. Police found the house in Compton when a local mother reported that her kids had seen a bunch of people playing with an arsenal of automatic weapons in the living room of the home.

The LAPD's 500-man siege on the Compton home was only the latest event in a short, but exceedingly bizarre, episode. The SLA was a small group of violent radicals who quickly made their way to national prominence, far out of proportion to their actual influence. They began by killing Oakland's superintendent of schools in late 1973 but really burst into society's consciousness when they kidnapped Hearst the following February.

Months later, the SLA released a tape on which Hearst said that she was changing her name to Tania and joining the SLA. Shortly thereafter, a surveillance camera in a bank caught Hearst carrying a machine gun during an SLA robbery. In another incident, SLA member General Teko was caught trying to shoplift from a sporting goods store, but escaped when Hearst sprayed the front of the building with machine gun fire.

Although law enforcement officials began talking about the SLA as if they were a well-established paramilitary terrorist organization, the SLA had only a handful of members, most of who were disaffected middle class youths.

On May 17, Los Angeles police shot an estimated 1,200 rounds of ammunition into the tiny Compton home as six SLA members shot back. Teargas containers thrown into the hideout started a fire, but the SLA refused to surrender. Autopsy results showed that they continued to fire back even as smoke and flames were searing their lungs; they clearly chose suicide and martyrdom over jail. Randolph Hearst, Patty's father, remarked that the massive attack had turned "dingbats into martyrs." The raid left six SLA members dead, including leader Donald DeFreeze, also known as Cinque. Patty Hearst was not inside the home at the time. She was not found until September 1975.

Patty Hearst was put on trial for armed robbery and convicted, despite her claim that she had been coerced, through repeated rape, isolation, and brainwashing, into joining the SLA. Prosecutors believed that she actually orchestrated her own kidnapping because of her prior involvement with one of the SLA members. Despite any real proof of this theory, she was convicted and sent to prison. President Carter commuted Hearst's sentence after she had served almost two years. Hearst was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001.

This Day in History

 May 16, 1929:
First Academy Awards ceremony



On this day in 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out its first awards, at a dinner party for around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.

The brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, head of the powerful MGM film studio, the Academy was organized in May 1927 as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and improvement of the film industry. Its first president and the host of the May 1929 ceremony was the actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Unlike today, the winners of the first Oscars--as the coveted gold-plated statuettes later became known--were announced before the awards ceremony itself.

At the time of the first Oscar ceremony, sound had just been introduced into film. The Warner Bros. movie The Jazz Singer--one of the first "talkies"--was not allowed to compete for Best Picture because the Academy decided it was unfair to let movies with sound compete with silent films. The first official Best Picture winner (and the only silent film to win Best Picture) was Wings, directed by William Wellman. The most expensive movie of its time, with a budget of $2 million, the movie told the story of two World War I pilots who fall for the same woman. Another film, F.W. Murnau's epic Sunrise, was considered a dual winner for the best film of the year. German actor Emil Jannings won the Best Actor honor for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, while 22-year-old Janet Gaynor was the only female winner. After receiving three out of the five Best Actress nods, she won for all three roles, in Seventh Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise.

A special honorary award was presented to Charlie Chaplin. Originally a nominee for Best Actor, Best Writer and Best Comedy Director for The Circus, Chaplin was removed from these categories so he could receive the special award, a change that some attributed to his unpopularity in Hollywood. It was the last Oscar the Hollywood maverick would receive until another honorary award in 1971.

The Academy officially began using the nickname Oscar for its awards in 1939; a popular but unconfirmed story about the source of the name holds that Academy executive director Margaret Herrick remarked that the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar. Since 1942, the results of the secret ballot voting have been announced during the live-broadcast Academy Awards ceremony using the sealed-envelope system. The suspense--not to mention the red-carpet arrival of nominees and other stars wearing their most beautiful or outrageous evening wear--continues to draw international attention to the film industry's biggest night of the year.

This Day in History

 May 14, 1998:
Frank Sinatra dies



On this day in 1998, the legendary singer, actor and show-business icon Frank Sinatra dies of a heart attack in Los Angeles, at the age of 82.

Sinatra emerged from an Italian-American family in Hoboken, New Jersey, to become the first modern superstar of popular music, with an entertainment career that spanned more than five decades. In the first incarnation of his singing career, he was a master of the romantic ballads popular during World War II. After his appeal began to wane in the late 1940s, Sinatra reinvented himself as a suave swinger with a rougher, world-weary singing style, and began a spectacular comeback in the 1950s.

In addition to his great musical success, Sinatra appeared in 58 films; one of his earliest was Anchors Aweigh (1945). Playing a cocky Italian-American soldier who meets a violent death in From Here to Eternity (1953), co-starring Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift, Sinatra won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His film career flourished after that, as he starred as Nathan Detroit in the movie musical Guys and Dolls (1955) and played a heroin addict in The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), for which he was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor. He also starred in the musicals High Society (1956) and Pal Joey (1957) and turned in a memorable performance as an Army investigator in the acclaimed film The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

By the late 1950s, Sinatra had become the epitome of show-business success and glamorous, rough-edged masculinity. He even headed up his own entourage, known as the Rat Pack, which included Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. The group had originally formed around Humphrey Bogart, who died in 1957. The Rat Pack first appeared together on the big screen in 1960’s casino caper Ocean’s Eleven. They would go on to make Sergeant’s Three (1962), Four for Texas (1963) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). Onscreen and in real life, the Pack’s famous stomping grounds included Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York (notably the Copacabana Club).

Sinatra worked steadily in film throughout the 1960s, though many of his performances seemed almost perfunctory. His last major Hollywood role came in 1980’s The First Deadly Sin. A famous heartthrob, Sinatra married four times, divorcing his longtime sweetheart Nancy Barbato after a decade and three children (Nancy, Frank Jr. and Christina) to marry the actress Ava Gardner in 1951. Their marriage lasted less than two years, and in 1966 Sinatra married the 21-year-old actress Mia Farrow, 30 years his junior; they were divorced in 1968. In 1976, he married Barbara Blakely Marx (the former wife of Zeppo Marx), and they remained together until his death.

This Day in History

 May 13, 1981:
Pope John Paul II shot



Near the start of his weekly general audience in Rome's St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II is shot and seriously wounded while passing through the square in an open car. The assailant, 23-year-old escaped Turkish murderer Mehmet Ali Agca, fired four shots, one of which hit the pontiff in the abdomen, narrowly missing vital organs, and another that hit the pope's left hand. A third bullet struck 60-year-old American Ann Odre in the chest, seriously wounding her, and the fourth hit 21-year-old Jamaican Rose Hill in the arm. Agca's weapon was knocked out of his hand by bystanders, and he was detained until his arrest by police. The pope was rushed by ambulance to Rome's Gemelli Hospital, where he underwent more than five hours of surgery and was listed in critical but stable condition.

John Paul II, once the spiritual leader of almost 600 million Roman Catholics around the world, was invested in 1978 as the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope in 456 years. Fluent in seven modern languages and Latin, he was known as an avid traveler who had little fear of going out in public. Four days after being shot, he offered forgiveness to his would-be assassin from his hospital bed. The pontiff spent three weeks in the hospital before being released fully recovered from his wounds.

The motives of Mehmet Ali Agca in attempting to kill the head of the Roman Catholic Church were enigmatic, and remain so today. In the 1970s, Agca joined a right-wing Turkish terrorist group known as the Gray Wolves. The group is held responsible for the assassination of hundreds of public officials, labor organizers, journalists, and left-wing activists as part of their mission to cleanse Turkey of leftist influence. In recent years, it has been revealed that the Gray Wolves had close ties with far-right politicians, intelligence officers, and police commanders. In February 1979, Abdi Ipekci, a liberal newspaper editor, was murdered near his home in Istanbul. Mehmet Ali Agca was arrested and charged with the crime. While awaiting his trial, Agca escaped from a military prison in November 1979.

In his cell, he left behind a letter that concerned John Paul II's planned trip to Turkey. The letter read: "Western imperialists who are afraid of Turkey's unity of political, military, and economic power with the brotherly Islamic countries are sending the Crusader Commander John Paul under the mask of a religions leader. If this ill-timed and meaningless visit is not called off, I will definitely shoot the pope. This is the only reason that I escaped from prison." Because of this threat, security was tightened during the pope's Turkish visit, and there was no assassination attempt. A Turkish court convicted Agca of murder in absentia, and he remained at large.

On May 9, 1981, Agca took a plane from Majorca to Milan and entered Italy under an assumed name. He took a room in a hotel near the Vatican and on May 13 walked into St. Peter's Square and shot the pope with a 9mm Browning automatic. A handwritten note was found in his pocket that read: "I am killing the pope as a protest against the imperialism of the Soviet Union and the United States and against the genocide that is being carried out in Salvador and Afghanistan." He pleaded guilty, saying he acted alone, and in July 1981 was sentenced to life in prison.

In 1982, Agca announced that his assassination attempt was actually part of a conspiracy involving the Bulgarian intelligence services, which was known to act on behalf of the KGB. Pope John Paul II was a fervent anti-communist who supported the Solidarity trade union in his native Poland, which seemed to make him an appropriate target for the communists. In 1983, despite these developments, the pope met with Mehmet in prison and offered him forgiveness. Further interrogations of Agca led to the arrest of three Bulgarians and three Turks, who went on trial in 1985.

As the trial opened, the case against the Bulgarian and Turkish defendants collapsed when Agca, the state's key witness, described himself as Jesus Christ and predicted the imminent end of the world. He explained that the Bulgarian scenario was concocted by Western intelligence officials, and that God had in fact led him to shoot John Paul II. The attack, he explained, was "tied to the Third Secret of the Madonna of Fatima." The secrets of Fatima were three messages that Catholic tradition says the Virgin Mary imparted to three Portuguese shepherd children in an apparition in 1917. The first message allegedly predicted World War II, the second the rise (and fall) of the Soviet Union, and the third was still a Vatican secret in 1985. In 1986, the Bulgarian and Turkish defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence.

In the late 1990s, Pope John Paul II expressed his hope that the Italian government would pardon Mehmet in 2000. The pontiff had made 2000 a holy "Jubilee" year, of which forgiveness was to be a cornerstone. On May 13, 2000, the 19th anniversary of the attempt on his life, the pope visited Fatima, Portugal. The same day, the Third Secret of Fatima was announced by Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano. Sodano described the secret as a "prophetic vision" in which "a bishop clothed in white...falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire." The Vatican interpreted this as a prediction of the attempt on John Paul II's life. Mehmet Ali Agca, who had guessed the alleged Fatima-assassination connection in 1985, was pardoned by Italian President Carolo Ciampi on June 14, 2000. Extradited to Turkey, he began serving the eight years remaining on the sentence for his 1979 murder of the Turkish newspaper editor.

In February 2005, Pope John Paul II was hospitalized with complications from the flu. He died two months later, on April 2, 2005, at his home in the Vatican. Six days later two million people packed Vatican City for his funeral--said to be the biggest funeral in history. Although it was not confirmed by the Vatican until 2003, many believe Pope John Paul II began suffering from Parkinson's disease in the early 1990s. He began to develop slurred speech and had difficulty walking, though he continued to keep up a physically demanding travel schedule. In his final years, he was forced to delegate many of his official duties, but still found the strength to speak to the faithful from a window at the Vatican.

Pope John Paul II is remembered for his successful efforts to end communism, as well as for building bridges with peoples of other faiths, and issuing the Catholic Church's first apology for its actions during World War II. He was succeeded by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI began the process to beatify John Paul II in May 2005.

This Day in History

 May 12, 1963:
Bob Dylan walks out on The Ed Sullivan Show

By the end of the summer of 1963, Bob Dylan would be known to millions who watched or witnessed his performances at the March on Washington, and millions more who did not know Dylan himself would know and love his music thanks to Peter, Paul and Mary's smash-hit cover version of "Blowin' In The Wind." But back in May, Dylan was still just another aspiring musician with a passionate niche following but no national profile whatsoever. His second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, had not yet been released, but he had secured what would surely be his big break with an invitation to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. That appearance never happened. On May 12, 1963, the young and unknown Bob Dylan walked off the set of the country's highest-rated variety show after network censors rejected the song he planned on performing.

The song that caused the flap was "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," a satirical talking-blues number skewering the ultra-conservative John Birch Society and its tendency to see covert members of an international Communist conspiracy behind every tree. Dylan had auditioned "John Birch" days earlier and had run through it for Ed Sullivan himself without any concern being raised. But during dress rehearsal on the day of the show, an executive from the CBS Standards and Practices department informed the show's producers that they could not allow Dylan to go forward singing "John Birch." While many of the song's lyrics about hunting down "reds" were merely humorous—"Looked up my chimney hole/Looked down deep inside my toilet bowl/They got away!"—others that equated the John Birch Society's views with those of Adolf Hitler raised the fear of a defamation lawsuit in the minds of CBS's lawyers. Rather than choose a new number to perform or change his song's lyrics—as the Rolling Stones and the Doors would famously do in the years to come—Dylan stormed off the set in angry protest.

Or so goes the legend that helped establish Dylan's public reputation as an artist of uncompromising integrity. In reality, Bob Dylan was polite and respectful in declining to accede to the network's wishes. "I explained the situation to Bob and asked him if he wanted to do something else," recalls Ed Sullivan Show producer Bob Precht, "and Bob, quite appropriately, said 'No, this is what I want to do. If I can't play my song, I'd rather not appear on the show.'" It hardly mattered whether Dylan's alleged tantrum was fact or reality. The story got widespread media attention in the days that followed, causing Ed Sullivan himself to denounce the network's decision in published interviews. In the end, however, the free publicity Bob Dylan received may have done more for his career than his abortive national-television appearance scheduled for this day in 1963 ever could have

This Day in History

 May 11, 1981:
Bob Marley dies



In what would prove to be the next to the last concert of his tragically short life, Bob Marley shared the bill at Madison Square Garden with the hugely popular American funk band The Commodores. With no costumes, no choreography and no set design to speak of, "The reggae star had the majority of his listeners on their feet and in the palm of his hand," according to New York Times critic Robert Palmer. "After this show of strength, and Mr. Marley's intense singing and electric stage presence, the Commodores were a letdown." Only days after his triumphant shows in New York City, Bob Marley collapsed while jogging in Central Park and later received a grim diagnosis: a cancerous growth on an old soccer injury on his big toe had metastasized and spread to Marley's brain, liver and lungs. Less than eight months later, on May 11, 1981, Bob Marley, the soul and international face of reggae music, died in a Miami, Florida, hospital. He was only 36 years old.

Nesta Robert Marley was born on February 6, 1945, in rural St. Ann Parish, Jamaica, the son of a middle-aged white Jamaican Marine officer and an 18-year-old black Jamaican girl. At the age of nine, Marley moved to Trench Town, a tough West Kingston ghetto where he would meet and befriend Neville "Bunny" Livingston (later Bunny Wailer) and Peter McIntosh (later Peter Tosh) and drop out of school at age 14 to make music. Jamaica at the time was entering a period of incredible musical creativity. As transistor radios became available on an island then served only by a staid, BBC-style national radio station, the music of America suddenly became accessible via stateside radio stations. From a mix of New Orleans-style rhythm and blues and indigenous, African-influenced musical traditions arose first ska, then rock steady—precursor styles to reggae, which did not take shape as a recognizable style of its own until the late 1960s.

Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer performed together as The Wailers throughout this period, coming into their own as a group just as reggae became the dominant sound in Jamaica. Thanks to the international reach of Island Records, the Wailers came to the world's attention in the early 1970s via their albums Catch a Fire (1972) and Burnin' (1973). Eric Clapton spread the group's name even wider by recording a pop-friendly version of "I Shot The Sheriff" from the latter album. With the departure of Tosh and Wailer in 1974, Marley took center stage in the group, and by the late 70s he had turned out a string of albums— Exodus (1977), featuring "Jamming," "Waiting In Vain" and "One Love/People Get Ready;" Kaya (1978), featuring "Is This Love" and "Sun Is Shining"; and Uprising (1980), featuring "Could You Be Loved" and "Redemption Song."

While none of the aforementioned songs was anything approaching a hit in the United States during Bob Marley's lifetime, they constitute a legacy that has only increased his fame in the years since his death on this day in 1981.