Today, this day in history, the House of Representatives passes the thirteenth amendment.  After much debate, a constitutional amendment is passed, mostly to over ride the Dredd Scott Decision.  If you haven't seen the movie and like the historical aspects of life, it is a must see.  If not just for the way that Lincoln lobbies to get the it passed.  So today, January 31, 1865, the amendment abolishing slavery cleared its first hurdle before moving on to the Senate chamber.  

      This glimpse at racial relations brings us closer to home, where landmarks from the underground railroad are present.  As escaping slaves worked their way up towards Saratoga Springs, they were faced with a few choices.  Even though we might think of Saratoga as great place now, it was a hot bed of pro-slavery political thought during the Civil War.  Highlighted by the kidnapping of freeman, Solomon Northup, who was taken from the location in front of Congress Park and forced into slavery down south. However, the out lining areas were far more sympathetic to the needs of the underground railroad, and the trail worked its way around the city to the east and west.  The route west, was helped by the people at the Stone Church, located on Stone Church road. They often held meetings and not far away the Morey House provided a sanctuary for run away slaves.  As one travels further north from this location they will come upon the house located up on a hill near the four corners in Greenfield, another sympathetic town.  Following the road towards Wilton, you then come across the Wayside Inn, which according to legends and stories passed down hid runaway slaves.  

        Another spot for harboring run away slave is located in Gansevoort, the Gansevoort Mansion.  

           Today January 29, 1936, the inaugural class is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  The hall of fame rests in the bucolic region near Lake Otsego, or as  James Fenimore Cooper referred to it as, "Glimmerglass", in his Leatherstocking tales.  I watched a good portion of, "A League of Their Own", last night, so I am ready for some baseball. Without the crying, of course.
            The area's natural beauty provides a spectacular drive and visual display for the eyes, while giving the Hall of Fame a serene backdrop.  The facility itself wasn't completed until a few years later, so there were no, "on sight" ceremonies, until 1939, when the previous years inductees would gather for that year's induction celebrations.
         Baseball is one of those sports where the numbers and alphabet soup of statistics, (ERA, RBI, Whip), are tantamount to the fan in most cases. Often debates can be heard comparing this player's number to that player, across leagues, across generations even. Ruth to Cobb, Rose to Cobb, Johnson to Ryan etc, endless debates ensued for decades and the numbers are what get you into the HOF.  We have Henry Chadwick to thank for that, he invented the first scoring system and box scores thus starting the stats war that has fueled so many debates.  Chadwick was a 45 year veteran of baseball writers, and was instrumental in bringing the Hall to Cooperstown. He is the only writer to have an actual plaque on display there.
           The original class is has some of the most impeccable credentials that baseball has ever seen, and sports some of the all-time classic players... Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson.  So go out and enjoy the records at the shrine of our national pastime and hit up the areas other attractions and many other entertainment venues. There is some wonderful history trapped in those walls.

Every Day is a Challenge, just not a Challenger

     Today, January 28th, 1986, the nation stood in disbelief as one of it's iconic images, the Space Shuttle, suffered a catastrophic moment.
     I was almost 13 and going to school at the lovely Saratoga Springs Junior High, when one of the students had announced, during student center, that the Challenger Space Shuttle had exploded during a routine launch.  We had all come to grow a little complacent, as the shuttle made these types of missions routine and somewhat boring to a degree.  But, 74 seconds into the launch a faulty o-ring, one of those "news item" terms that sticks with you the same way we remember the hanging chad and pregnant dimples, failed and leaked highly volatile rocket fuel over the outside of the shuttle.  The o-ring failed in the unusually colder weather of the Floridian morning which resulted in the explosion.

     It has since been concluded that, as the shuttle broke up, the crew compartment was left intact, but it was unknown whether or not the cabin air pressure had been breached. If  the cabin pressure was compromised, then the crew would have been unconscious seconds after the fuel tanks broke up and as the cabin hit the water. However, there seems to be some evidence that point the other direction. There were personal oxygen bags that the crew must manually deploy in the case of a calamity, and it was later determined that there was a portion of oxygen used, or expelled from the canisters. This has lead some to believe that some of the astronauts were alive and conscious as the crew pod hit the water.  This was highlighted in a report released by Admiral Truly who stated,


"the cause of death of the Challenger astronauts cannot be positively determined; 
the forces to which the crew were exposed during Orbiter breakup were probably not sufficient to cause death or serious injury; and 
the crew possibly, but not certainly, lost consciousness in the seconds following Orbiter breakup due to in-flight loss of crew module pressure. 
Our inspection and analyses revealed certain facts which support the above conclusions, and these are related below: The forces on the Orbiter at breakup were probably too low to cause death or serious injury to the crew but were sufficient to separate the crew compartment from the forward fuselage, cargo bay, nose cone, and forward reaction control compartment. The forces applied to the Orbiter to cause such destruction clearly exceed its design limits. The data available to estimate the magnitude and direction of these forces included ground photographs and measurements from onboard accelerometers, which were lost two-tenths of a second after vehicle breakup."

For some other images:


http://space.about.com/od/challenger/ig/Challenger-Disaster-Pictures/

Trapped in History: "Got to Get You Into My Life"

Trapped in History: "Got to Get You Into My Life":     Beatle's classic for today's archive...today, January 25th 1980, Sir Paul McCartney is released from a Tokyo jail after being jailed for...

"Got to Get You Into My Life"

    Beatle's classic for today's archive...today, January 25th 1980, Sir Paul McCartney is released from a Tokyo jail after being jailed for nine days, after a customs agent finds the hippy lettuce in his luggage.  He will be deported, after his first trip back since a Beatle in 1966, and not allowed to return to Japan until 1990.
     Before a scheduled week long concert tour with Wings, Sir Paul was visiting the fine city of New York when he came across a half pound of marijuana that apparently was really good. He claimed, "We were about to fly to Japan and I knew I wouldn't be able to get anything to smoke over there. This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I'd thought I'd take it with me."  Somewhere Snoop Dog is surely smiling!!
     McCartney apparently hooked up with some fine New York kush  and boarded the plane to Tokyo, landed, and as a Japanese customs agent pulled out the block of hooch, he sat there calmly.  That is until he realized that the Japanese have a pretty strict penal code concerning drugs. The half pound was enough to warrant a drug trafficking charge, which included a seven year sentence, and Sir Paul was ushered to a Tokyo Jail and was then referred to as prisoner #22.  The tour, needless to say was cancelled and he spent the next nine days in jail.  He was finally released today in 1980 avoiding any court appearance.

Changing of the Emperor

     Usually I like to get out and take photos of the subject matters that I like to write about. However, it's been way to cold the last two days and sometimes topics do just jump out at cha, because of the subject matter and level of interest. So today is Neil Diamond's birthday, but I will not be making many comments about that, other than to point out that he is popular in Red Sox nation.  Which is fine, because the Yankees have Sinatra. Enough said there, one is nice and fine but the other is an all-time venerable classic. So happy birthday Neil!!  Now, the real hook into today's history is Caligula.  No, not the orgiastic movie starring Malcolm McDowell, there was actually a real guy, who ruled over the Roman Empire from 37-41 CE.
     Caligula was the third Roman Emperor, after the fall of the Republic.  He would follow the regime of Octavian, who was able to wrestle control away from Marc Antony in a decisive civil war, thus further consolidating power and setting up a line of emperors.  His rule was short and there is a certain amount of debate as to the validity of the historical record. However it goes like this, the first two years of his reign seemed peaceful and smooth. The second two, not so much.  He embarked on several grandiose building projects, mainly improving his own dwellings, while bankrupting Rome.  He was known for his intense cruelty, including having an entire section of the crowd thrown to hungry animals, while overseeing events at the Coliseum.  He was known for his perverse sexual exploits, incest, orgies and pimping out of family members as well as his apparent lunacy.  Often claiming to be divine and dressing in the wardrobe of the gods, like Hercules, he would parade around in public.
     Well on this day, 41 CE, the overspending and kinky emperor was put to death by the Praetorian Guard, who had conspired with the Senate to dispose of the despot.  He was immediately replaced by his uncle Claudius.
  

Hulking the A-Team

     Anyone around my age will surely remember two TV shows and experiences from our youth, at least the guys will. Today, Jan. 23, 1983, saw the introduction of the TV show the A-Team. Then a year later, in 1984, Hulk Hogan becomes the WWF heavyweight champion, by beating the Iron Sheik.
   
     Most remember the A-team as a pretty fun show, where the good guys came out on top and regardless of the types of destruction and violence, nobody ever seemed to get hurt or perish during an episode.  It was a fairly popular show and the cast was bolstered by the popularity of two individuals, George Peppard and the venerable Mr.T.  Peppard was an established actor who had been around hollywood for many years and Mr. T was a sparring partner to many boxers, who landed a huge break by being on the show.  The show ran for several years, until it finally jumped the shark when they introduced R Snyder's favorite characters, Amy and Franky, towards the end of the show's run.  It was this show that put black vans with red stripes and a haircut called the mohawk on the map.
   
     A year later, Hulk Hogan wins the WWF championship after squirming out of the Iron Sheik's signature, submission move, the Camel Clutch.  The sheik had taken down former champ, Bob Backlund, a few months prior, and looked to have Hogan bested before the Hulk went nuts, as he always did, dropped the elbow, then the big leg and in swift fashion turned the match around and ended it quickly with a pin.  Hogan would go on to have a very successful career in the world of wrestling as most people are aware, and even to this day still makes many public appearances for the WWE.
   

     I think a very interesting point to all this is that, even ignoring the link to the same day, they were still linked in another way. For instance, Mr. T, who would have a cereal named after him and a cartoon show about him (remember those?), would enter into the wrastling ring. That's right, Mr. T would team up with Hogan, during Wrestlemania I, for a tag team match against Piper and Orndorff. Mr.T would stick around wrestling for several years in various, entertaining capacities.

     Of course, everyone will remember Rocky III.  The movie starred Mr. T, as the tough, up and coming young boxer, Clubber Lang.  The Film also featured a cameo by Hogan as Thunderlips, where in a match for charity, fights Hogan. So, history has a strange way of trapping people, events and things together.  As we all know, Rocky goes on to win the fight over Lang setting up several more sequels.

Happy Birthday Balanchine

     On this day, January 22, 1904, George Balanchine is born in, St. Petersburg, Russia. Balanchine would go on to become the 20th century's foremost choreographer and found the New York City Ballet.  I figured it was worth noting considering the importance that the NYCB has on our area with it's residency at SPAC, compounded by Balanchine's importance in the world of dance.
   
     Born before the Russian Revolution, Balanchine showed significant promise as a young dancer, in one of Moscow's top ballets.  After the revolution was over, Balanchine used a trip to Germany, in 1924, to escape to Paris with other members of the dance group.
   
     Arriving in the states, Balanchine set up several different dance companies, mostly to reflect his own dance style. One of these companies would become the NYCB, after it was offered residency by the City of New York, in 1948. The Ballet would start spending its summer residency at SPAC, in 1966.  There still is a tireless and concerted effort, by many local individuals, to keep the ballet in Saratoga and to extend the summer season.
   
     Balanchine would climb to fame by collaborating with such notable greats as Igor Stravinsky and adapting classics like the Nutcracker, which is still performed annually around Christmas time and makes for a fabulous Pas de deux. He would choreograph over 400 hundred ballets, in his lifetime, working with the music of Stravinsky on 39 of them.

     Balanchine died on April 30th, 1983. However, before he died he received the Kennedy Center Award, in 1978 and the Presidential Freedom of Honor award. In 1987 he was inducted into the National Dance Hall of Fame, in its inaugural class, along with Fred Astaire.  There are several events over at the Hall of Fame dedicated to the memory of Balanchine throughout the time it is open.