The Centre Cannot Hold » 1961

1961 – Soviet submarine S-80 is lost with all hands in the Arctic Sea

Loki — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:23:58 +0000

Originally launched on October 21, 1950 at Krasnoye Sormovo Factory in Gorky, the S-80 was a Whiskey Class submarine, and was later overhauled between 1957 and 1959. On January 27, 1961, the S-80 was sailing through the Barents Sea (a portion of the between the Svalbard Islands and the Arkhangelsk Oblast, directly north of Murmansk). At about 1:27am, the S-80 dropped below snorkel depth, but a mechanical fault caused portions of the submarine to flood.

Alarm spread, but not as quickly as the water and the cascading mechanical faults. In the end, a total of 68 men – the complete complement of officers and crew – lost their lives in the sinking. The S-80 and the men aboard it were not found for seven and a half years.

Referenced in:

Reckless (Don’t Be So) — Australian Crawl

1961 – “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” premieres

Loki — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:23:56 +0000

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is perhaps the single best known film of Audrey Hepburn’s career. Less well-remembered for it is the other lead, George Peppard. It is based – somewhat loosely – on a short story of the same name written by Truman Capote. Hepburn and Peppard play Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak. He’s a struggling writer. She’s, umm, well, something unspecified. But although the film (largely due to the Hays Code) dodges around the issue, Capote’s story is less circumspect: she’s a call girl (albeit, a very high class one) and he’s a kept man. The don’t fight crime (what with being too busy committing it on a daily basis), but they do, somehow, find love with each other.

Hepburn was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance, but lost out to Sophia Loren. In fact, the film’s two Oscars actually came from it’s music – one for Henry Mancini’s score, one for the song “Moon River”, co-written by Mancini with Johnny Mercer and performed by Hepburn in the film.

The film is also controversial for its stereotypical depiction of the Asian character, Mr. Yunioshi, who was played by Mickey Rooney, and is little more than a buffoon.

Referenced in:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Deep Blue Something

1961 – “Stranger in a Strange Land” is published

Loki — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:23:18 +0000

One of the most famous science fiction novels of all time, Robert Anson Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” remains a cult favourite even today. In the 1960′s, it took a while to find a mainstream audience. Despite winning a Hugo (for Best Novel) in 1962, it was not until 1967 that the book became one of the texts most associated with the burgeoning hippie movement. The plot of the book basically concerns a messiah figure who comes to Earth from Mars and founds what he calls ‘the Church of All Worlds.’ It’s an open question whether the book’s emphasis on free love made it attractive to hippies, or whether the book introduced that idea.

Approximately 60,000 words were cut from the book when it was first published, presumably because they were considered too shocking at the time, and it was not until thirty years later (and three years after Heinlein’s death) in 1991 that the full version, some 220,000 words in length, was published. Neither version has ever been out of print.

Referenced in:

We Didn’t Start The Fire – Billy Joel

1961 – John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President of the USA

Loki — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:23:25 +0000

John F. Kennedy’s Innaugration oath was administed by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren with all the due pomp and ceremony.

Kennedy’s speech that day was unusually short for an Innaugral Address, but it is generally considered to be one of the better innaugral addresses. Such well known Kennedy quotations as “ask not what your country can do for you…” and “the torch has been passed to a new generation…”

Also, notably, Kennedy was the first President in some decades not to wear a hat at his Innaugration, pretty much single-handedly killing hats for men. Strange but true.

Referenced in:
She Is Always Seventeen – Harry Chapin