August 30, 1935 (It could have been on the 29th, I don't know, I wasn't there.) -
RKO released the fourth Astaire and Rogers, Irving Berlin tune filled musical, Top Hat, in New York, on this date.
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers frequently denied any major rivalry between them. But because so much of the praise and attention for the quality of the pictures has been focused on him, she was quick to point out she had plenty of input into the dance routines and was known as the "button finder," a show biz term for the person who can come up with just the right last word or finishing touch on a scene or number.
August 30, 1959 -
Bobby Darin's jazzy interpretation of Mack The Knife began its 26-week stay on the pop-singles charts.
Darin decided to perform this song when he saw a production of The Threepenny Opera in Greenwich Village in 1958. He thought up his own way of presenting the song, and started performing it in his nightclub act, where it was well received.
August 30, 1967 -
John Boorman's crime drama thriller, Point Blank, premiered on this date.
John Boorman was called in for a meeting with MGM President Robert O'Brien in which the executive immediately began expressing concern, but partway into the meeting the phone rang. It was David Lean making requests in advance of his next film, Ryan's Daughter, and O'Brien was so excited to speak with him that when the call ended, he simply ushered Boorman out, saying only "make a good one". Boorman told Lean years later how he had saved him.
August 30, 1965 -
Bob Dylan's sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited was released on this date. It was his first album to feature other rock musicians backing him on the album.
The Highway 61 Revisited album marks not only a milestone in Dylan's career, but a turbulent time for the culture surrounding him. Before releasing this album, Dylan played the notorious Newport Folk Festival, which is famous for all the wrong reasons (the crowd there was upset because Dylan was only going to play for 15 minutes), and afterwards was the Forest Hills concert, which is less-well known but had a much more turbulent crowd doing a lot more booing for reasons that weren't clear to anyone.
August 30, 1968 -
Apple Records released its first single, Hey Jude by The Beatles on this date.
In a 2018 interview with GQ, Paul McCartney talked about how he came up with the idea for this song: "John and his wife Cynthia had divorced, and I felt a bit sorry for their son, who was now a child of a divorce. I was driving out to see the son and Cynthia one day and I was thinking about the boy whose name was Julian - Julian Lennon, and I started this idea, 'Hey Jules, don't make it bad, it's gonna be OK.' It was like a reassurance song."
August 30, 1986 -
Steve Winwood single, Higher Love went to No. 1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.
This was Winwood's first US #1 single, either as a solo artist or with a group. He was 38 when it topped the chart on this date, but he had already been making music for more than two decades.
August 30, 1993 -
Moving himself and his gang of cohorts from NBC-TV, The Late Show with David Letterman premiered on CBS-TV, on this date.
The microphone on David Letterman's desk was an old RCA DX 77. It was a replacement for the original microphone given to him as a gift from the NBC crew when he left the network. A couple of years after making the move to CBS, the original microphone was stolen. The microphone on his desk was usually not plugged in. His primary microphone was the lapel clipped to his tie.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
August 30, 1780 -
General "Eggs" Benedict Arnold secretly promised to surrender the West Point fort to the British army during the American Revolution. The measure of Arnold's treachery was made worse by the fact that he was considered by many to be the best general and most accomplished leader in the Continental Army.
In fact, without Arnold's earlier contributions to the American cause, the American Revolution might well have been lost; notwithstanding, his name, like those of several other prominent traitors throughout history, has become a byword for treason and a brunch staple.
August 30, 1859 -
At the University of Göttingen, PhD candidate Albert Niemann isolates the alkaloid C17H21NO4 from leaves of the plant Erythroxylum coca.
Oh, that's what cocaine does. Now I know.
August 30, 1918 -
Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin should have been having a great day on this date. Six weeks earlier, Lenin had the previous tenant of Kremlin, Tsar Nicholas II, permanently taken off the lease. After speaking at a factory in Moscow, Lenin was shot twice by Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Social Revolutionary party. Lenin narrowly survived an assassination attempt, but was severely wounded.
As Lenin was a 'godless' communist, he did not turn the other cheek. The assassination attempt set off a wave of reprisals by the Bolsheviks against the Social Revolutionaries and other political opponents. Thousands were executed as Russia fell deeper into civil war.
August 30, 1930 -
Warren Edward Buffett often called the "Sage of Omaha", "Oracle of Omaha", or "Omaha Steak", American investor, businessperson and philanthropist is born on this date. Buffett has amassed an enormous fortune from astute investments managed through the holding company Berkshire Hathaway, of which he is the largest shareholder and CEO.
With an estimated current net worth of around $96 billion (please note, these numbers are all from earlier this year - their wealth seem to have only continued to climb,) he was ranked by Forbes as the sixth-richest person in the world as of this past March, falling behind Jeff Bezos (with a net worth of $177 billion), Elon Musk (with a net worth of $151 billion), Bernard Arnault (with a net worth of $150 billion), Bill Gates (with a net worth of $124 billion), and Mark Zuckerberg (with a net worth of $97 billion.)
I, on the other hand, did not make a blip on the list.
August 30, 1963 -
Almost a year after the world barely averted World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Hotline between the Pentagon and the Kremlin went live, on this date.
The system consists of two teletype machines, with a full-time communications link routed through London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki.
August 30, 1967 -
Thurgood Marshall, the lawyer who was best known for arguing the Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court, became the first black US Supreme Court Justice.
The US Senate voted 69 to 11 to appoint Marshall (20 senators did not vote.) He served on the Court from 1967 to 1991.
August 30, 1983 -
The first black astronaut, Guion S. Bluford Jr., a US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, flew on the third mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
Bluford had entered the US Astronaut program in 1979; this was his first mission. This was also the first mission to launch and land at night.
And so it goes
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