Sole Focus

News, Views, Rantings & Ramblings by Carey Parrish

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Location: Georgia, United States

Sunday, January 30, 2011

This Day in History: January 30

1649 - England's King Charles I was beheaded.

1790 - The first purpose-built lifeboat was launched on the River Tyne.

1798 - The first brawl in the U.S. House of Representatives took place. Congressmen Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold fought on the House floor.

1844 - Richard Theodore Greener became the first African American to graduate from Harvard University.

1847 - The town of Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.

1862 - The U.S. Navy's first ironclad warship, the "Monitor", was launched.

1889 - Rudolph, crown prince of Austria, and his 17-year-old mistress, Baroness Marie Vetsera, were found shot in his hunting lodge at Mayerling, near Vienna.

1894 - C.B. King received a patent for the pneumatic hammer.

1900 - The British fighting the Boers in South Africa ask for a larger army.

1910 - Work began on the first board-track automobile speedway. The track was built in Playa del Ray, CA.

1911 - The first airplane rescue at sea was made by the destroyer "Terry." Pilot James McCurdy was forced to land in the ocean about 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.

1933 - "The Lone Ranger" was heard on radio for the first time. The program ran for 2,956 episodes and ended in 1955.

1933 - Adolf Hitler was named the German Chancellor.

1948 - Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu extremist.

1950 - NBC-TV debuted "Robert Montgomery Presents." The show lasted for seven seasons.

1958 - Yves Saint Laurent, at age 22, held his first major fashion show in Paris.

1958 - The first two-way moving sidewalk was put in service at Love Field in Dallas, TX. The length of the walkway through the airport was 1,435 feet.

1960 - The women’s singles U.S. figure skating championship was won by Carol Heiss.

1962 - Two members of the "Flying Wallendas" high-wire act were killed when their seven-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit, MI.

1964 - January 30 - The U.S. launched Ranger 6. The unmanned spacecraft carried television cameras and was intentionally crash-landed on the moon. The cameras did not return any pictures to Earth.

1968 - The Tet Offensive began as Communist forces launched surprise attacks against South Vietnamese provincial capitals.

1972 - In Northern Ireland, British soldiers shot and killed thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers. The day is known as "Bloody Sunday."

1979 - The civilian government of Iran announced it had decided to allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to return. He had been living in exile in France.

1989 - The U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan was closed.

1994 - Peter Leko became the world's youngest-ever grand master in chess.

1995 - The U.N. Security Council authorized the deployment of a 6,000-member U.N. peace-keeping contingent to assume security responsibilities in Haiti from U.S. forces.

1995 - Researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced that clinical trials had demonstrated the effectiveness of the first preventative treatment for sickle cell anaemia.

1996 - Gino Gallagher, the reputed leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, was shot and killed as he queued for his unemployment benefit.

1997 - A New Jersey judge ruled that the unborn child of a female prisoner must have legal representation. He denied the prisoner bail reduction to enable her to leave the jail and obtain an abortion.

2002 - Slobodan Milosevic accused the U.N. war crimes tribunal of an "evil and hostile attack" against him. Milosevic was defending his actions during the Balkan wars.

2002 - Japan's last coal mine was closed. The closures were due to high production costs and cheap imports.

2002 - In Los Angeles, 15 students and 3 adults were injured when they were hit by a car.

Supreme Sunday


Mary Wilson, Cindy Birdsong, and Jean Terrell took the country by storm when they reformed The Supremes in the wake of Diana Ross’ departure. This trio was hot. And they didn’t seem to be missing their former lead singer at all. As this clip from The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour shows, they were an entity unto themselves and they were making hits, thrilling audiences, and selling records like mad from their first appearance together onward.

One of their most popular performances from this period was Everybody’s Got The Right To Love. Performing it along with a medley that included Something About The Way He Moves Me and Homeward Bound (with Campbell) shows just how popular this new group of Supremes was. The studio audience couldn’t get enough.

Glen Campbell seemed perfectly at home with The Supremes, as they did with him, and their voices had never sounded better. This is a rare clip from one of their most exciting TV appearances from 1970. Between the huge hits of Up The Ladder To The Roof and Stoned Love, there was no question that The Supremes were on the scene with gusto.

Thought for Today

I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be anywhere. I'm not kidding.” -- Larry Hagman