This Day In History

[The Poet]

Aside from the historical event which is obvious to all of us, on the 50th anniversary of the symbolic foundation of the United States . . .

Originally Posted by shilala

Mr. Thomas, on the 4th of July, will you tell everyone that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on that day in 1826?

In 1855 Walt Whitman, perhaps the most "American" poet ever, self-published the first edition of his Leaves of Grass, which grew organically (like grass?) into a lyric masterpiece of epic length. Of more popular, albeit less significant, cultural import was the birth of playwright Neil Simon on this day in 1927. In 1997, following a trip of 120 million miles, the Pathfinder probe landed on Mars, though it bounced 16 times before it actually did so. Renamed the Sagen Memorial Station, it later deployed the first interplanetary rover, Sojourner, which added an extra 171 feet to the path traversed. And in 1954, in a suburb of Cleveland OH, Marilyn Sheppard, wife of Dr. Sam Sheppard, was bludgeoned to death in their bedroom as her husband slept on the daybed in the living room. Charged and later convicted of her murder, Dr. Sheppard vehemently denied he was guilty, claiming instead that the culprit he witnessed at the scene was a one-armed man . . . uh, excuse me, a bushy-haired intruder.

Oh, and as for an international revolution of a different sort, on this date in 1976, and with likely little if any interest in America's Bicentennial celebrations by colonials across The Pond, The Clash played their first live gig at The Black Swan in Sheffield England as an opening act for The Sex Pistols. I wonder if The Black Swan's loo was as nasty as the toilet in CBGB?