History

Today in History: May 26

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The 15,000,000th and final Model T automobile was driven off the Ford Motor Company’s assembly line by Henry Ford and his son Edsel in Highland Park, Michigan, on this date in 1927 (photo above).

The company started manufacturing the vehicle on October 1, 1908, and it was still popular two decades later—Ford’s factories produced between 1.5 and 2.0 million Model T’s each year from 1922 through 1926, but the numbers had been declining. It was time to introduce the Model A to the nation’s consumers. The replacement did quite well, too.

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Kaspar Hauser appeared on the streets of Nuremberg, Germany, on this date in 1828. He appeared to be a teenager, he carried two letters on his person, and he gave little evidence of understanding anything said to him. Taken together, the letters told a fantastical tale: one letter stated that it was from Kaspar’s caretaker and the second claimed to be from the boy’s mother to the caretaker, but both letters were in the same handwriting, probably the boy’s. Was he a runaway?
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Today in History: May 25

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is Towel Day.

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May 25, 1986, was a Sunday. For those of us in America, the day offered a New Yorker the chance to join hands with someone who was holding hands with someone who was holding hands with someone … all the way to the Pacific Ocean (or for a Californian, vice versa, to the Atlantic). It was Hands Across America Day, and Hands Across America was a one-time-only fundraiser for the USA for Africa charity.

Perhaps it is easy to forget that Hands Across America truly happened, that six million individuals actually paid money to reserve spots, which was how the charity raised money. The name itself sounded too much like a punchline awaiting a setup, and the event’s idea sounded forced. One can not predict that an event will be memorable or not. One can not sell that future memorability as a reason to pay money to participate.

As “Do Good/Feel Good” activities go, it may have inadvertently emphasized the “feel good” side of the equation over the “do good,” but 30 years ago today, a line of Americans six million long was indeed assembled and that line did indeed raise an estimated (and estimable!) $34 million to fight hunger and homelessness in America.

If you owned a television set that year, and if it was turned on for even just two minutes during the spring of 1986, it probably showed part of this music video (below the jump):
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The Confoundin’ Bob Dylan

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

On February 20, 1991, Bob Dylan (who turns 80 today) was handed a Grammy “Lifetime Achievement Award” by Jack Nicholson. (Will they grant him a second one soon? The man is still working, after all.)

Dylan in 1991 was beginning to receive the oldies act treatment, and he did not appear to enjoy this fact even one little bit. Since 1991: he has released ten albums, the most recent one of which came out on May 20 of this year; has performed a hundred or more live concerts each year on what critics decided to call his “Never-Ending Tour” around 1988; released a dozen box sets from his “bootleg” series; and publish an award-winning volume of his memoirs. Oh! And there are his many paintings and twisted-iron sculptures, some of which he debuted three years ago.
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