History

Today in History: July 8

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The cover-up is usually worse than whatever it is covering up, and, sometimes, the initial attempt at a cover-up is also minor, but the attempts to cover-up the first cover-up? Those are what breed suspicions. On this date in 1947, the Roswell (New Mexico) Daily Record published this front-page headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.” The “RAAF” in the headline is “Roswell Area Air Force.”

Since a few weeks before, the entire country had been “flying saucer” crazy, so this was just one of many similar headlines from the spring and summer of 1947. But this headline, this story, involved the military, which simultaneously supplied the public with two mutually exclusive thoughts: 1. a sense that authorities are in charge and are telling us the truth, and 2. the feeling that authorities are hiding something and deciding for us what truths we can handle.
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Today in History: July 7

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Announcing: The Greatest Forward Step in the Baking Industry Since Bread was Wrapped—Sliced Kleen Maid Bread—an ad placed in Chillicothe, Missouri, newspapers announcing the newest greatest thing, to be sold starting July 7, 1928.

The Chillicothe Baking Company started selling loaves of sliced bread on this date in 1928. An inventor from Davenport, Iowa, Otto Rohwedder, had dedicated years of his life to perfecting a machine that would slice a loaf of bread. His invention solved problems that only someone who had spent years trying to invent a machine to slice loaves of bread would know needed to be addressed: slice uniformity; a means of holding the loaf together, now that slicing it has ruined the loaf’s structural integrity; protection from drying out, now that the loaf’s insides have been exposed. His machine sliced and wrapped the loaves.
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Today in History: July 6

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I remember coming into the fete and seeing all the sideshows. And also hearing all this great music wafting in from this little Tannoy system. It was John and the band. I remember I was amazed and thought, ‘Oh great’, because I was obviously into the music. I remember John singing a song called ‘Come Go With Me.’ He’d heard it on the radio. He didn’t really know the verses, but he knew the chorus. The rest he just made up himself. I just thought, ‘Well, he looks good, he’s singing well and he seems like a great lead singer to me.’ Of course, he had his glasses off, so he really looked suave. I remember John was good. He was really the only outstanding member, all the rest kind of slipped away.—Paul McCartney, February 1995, Record Collector

The Woolton Parish Church’s “Garden Fete,” a neighborhood fair, of July 6, 1957, featured a long list of attractions and entertainment acts to fill the day: the Liverpool Police Dogs on display, a parade, the crowning of the Rose Queen, the “Band of the Cheshire Yeomanry,” and “The Quarry Men Skiffle Group,” who were also slated to perform at the “Grand Dance” that night at 8:00 p.m.

Paul McCartney, a 14-year-old who had started to perform music, remembered seeing the band during the day as they were carried through the neighborhood on the back of a flatbed truck. The lead singer of the Quarry Men was John Lennon, a 16-year-old, and McCartney noticed that Lennon, while “suave” and “outstanding,” also was performing on an improperly tuned guitar. (Lennon tuned it like a banjo, which is what he had learned to play on.) McCartney showed the musicians how to tune their guitars, and then performed some songs he knew: Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock,” Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” and some songs by Little Richard. Lennon impressed McCartney and McCartney impressed Lennon.

(Photo at top; Lennon, in plaid, is seated at center, next to the white-shirted drummer, with his back against the cab of the truck.)
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