One of the wonder-fabrics of the Fifties, Dacron was the trade name of a particular polyester sold by Du Pont Chemical – the first from that company and the second overall (after Terylene). Its actual chemical name is Polyethylene terephthalate. It was first sold in New York, where it was used to make a variety of garments, most prominently men’s suits. Although a fashion sensation at the time, it has dropped out of favour since the technophiliac Fifties, and is no longer used as much in clothing.
Modern applications for Dacron include ropes (especially for nautical use) and artificial organs, especially hearts – both applications where Dacron’s lack of biodegradability is desirable.
The fall of Dien Bien Phu marked the unofficial end of French Indo-China. The French Far East Expeditionary Corps was comprehensively defeated by the Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries – the first time that a colonial occupier had been so defeated. The causes of the defeat are many, but the two most prominent are the evolution of the Viet Minh from a loose group of disorganised guerilla bands into a force equivalent to standing national army, and a series of poor decisions made by the French defenders.
The Vietnamese victory came only after 55 days of battle, with large losses on both sides: as many as 2000 French dead and over 4000 Vietnamese. The fighting was close and deadly, often resembling the trench warfare of World War One as the siege progressed. In the final victory, almost 12,000 French prisoners were taken, and many died in captivity from wounds received in the fighting, or as a result of beatings, disease and starvation while imprisoned.
The official end of the first Indo-China War came later that year, although it would cast a long shadow, inspiring other rebellions in the French colonies of Madagascar and Algeria, two separate coups d’état in France itself, and of course, the Second Indo-China War – better known today as the Vietnam War.
The 1958 Ford Edsel is today recalled as one of the world’s greatest flopped products. This is usually attributed to it being a bad design, but in fact the car itself was the equal of any of Ford’s other lines at the time. The true failures were of timing and marketing.
The release of the 1958 Edsel – which took place in 1957 – occurred during a general slowdown of the US economy that year, when all car sales fell. It was that much harder for a newcomer to the market to find a place. Ford had also attempted a teaser style marketing campaign, creating a mystery regarding the car’s appearance – which led to it being less recognizable than its competitors. In addition, it was competing against very well-established brand names in its class – not least among them Ford’s own Mercury range. Finally, of course, it had a dorky name.
Slightly more than two years after its initial release, the Edsel was discontinued (although production and sales of existing models continued for some months), and Ford suffered a publicity black eye and a bad earnings year from it. Ironically, many of the features of the Edsel that were derided at the time are now standard for cars of its class.
It’s hard to remember now, but from about 1950 to 1989, every crisis in world politics was viewed as a potential trigger to World War Three. Every time, it seemed, you’d find the Western allies on one side and the Eastern Bloc on the other. This one was different.
On October 30, 1956, Israel invaded Egypt, with the collusion of France and the United Kingdom. The invasion was in response to Egypt’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal four months earlier. The three invaders all had political and economic reasons for invading: Britain wanted to ensure access to the Canal, as did the French. Both nations were also united in wanting to depose Egyptian President Gamel Nasser. For Israel, it was mostly a pre-emptive strike, as Egypt’s military had been gearing up for some time now, mixed with a little territorial expansion.
Reaction around the world was on Egypt’s side for the most part. Using the United Nations, the USA and USSR forged a consensus solution to the crisis, in which Britan and France withdrew without acheiving their goals, but Israel retained its captured territory. For both the European powers, the crisis accelerated decolonisation and led to a chill in their relations with the United States – one that has never really ended for the French. In Egypt, Nasser took credit for the “victory”, which he deluded himself was his doing – a delusion that would last until Egypt’s defeat in the Six Day War of 1967.
After the long, slow death of a thousand cuts that was the Watergate scandal, Nixon’s decision to resign from the Presidency – even in disgrace – must have come as something of a relief to him. Starting with the Watergate break-in, on June 17, 1972, which led to the revelation of the Nixon administration’s dirty tricks squad – and getting worse and worse as the attempted cover-up ballooned and failed.
Nixon fought, though. He fought as hard as could, as long as he could – for more than two years. But in the end, his only remaining choice was to leave on his own terms before he was forced out. The pardon that his hand-picked successor gave him – which was for all crimes including those yet to be discovered – was no doubt also a consideration.
Referenced in:
We Didn’t Start The Fire – Billy Joel
Ego Is Not A Dirty Word – Skyhooks
Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
She Is Always Seventeen – Harry Chapin
On this day, in 1951, one of the all-time great classics of teen angst was published. J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” is a coming of age tale in which the protagonist, Holden Caulfield – who is surely one of the least likable and self-aware characters ever to find his home on the page – comprehensively fails to come of age over the course of a weekend spent in New York City.
That hasn’t stopped a million English teachers from setting this book as required reading in the decades since then, and its place in the canon of popular literature has long since been assured, if only by the book’s role in the death of John Lennon. As one of the poor bastard students who was required to read this book in high school, I may not be an unbiased judge, and I apologise for that – but all these years on, I still loathe the damn thing, albeit not as entertainingly as John Scalzi does.
One of the world’s most popular forms of birth control, the Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill – or more commonly, The Pill – is a combination of oestrogen and progestogen in tablet form, which is swallowed daily by the user. It prevents unwanted pregnancies, and is perhaps the single most controversial legal drug in history.
Approved for use in the United States in 1960, the long term effects of the Pill were not well understood at the time. Some versions of the Pill later turned out to have unhealthy side-effects, including increased risks of cancer and birth control. But more important were the social effects. While there would still have been a Feminist movement in the Western world without the Pill, it would have been quite different in many ways, and very likely would have made less progress without the freedom that widely available contraception gave women.
In 1957, there were no professional baseball teams in the World Series (that is, the baseball league of the USA) west of Missouri. In 1958, that would all change, and it was largely thanks to one man: Walter O’Malley, who owned the Dodgers from 1950 until 1979. He took the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles – from Ebbets Field to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum – and also persuaded the managers of the New York Giants (traditional rivals of the Dodgers) to relocate their team to San Francisco, preserving the rivalry (well, sort of).
To say that O’Malley is a controversial figure in baseball is little like saying that there’s a bright light in the sky called the Sun. Even today, he is still hated in some parts of Brooklyn – the Dodgers might have been a bunch of bums, but they were Brooklyn’s bums, dammit!
Consistently one of the highest ranked Presidents in United States history, far and away the longest serving President, and despite the long years since his death, one of the most controversial, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was only 63 years old when he died. It was his thirteenth consecutive year as President, and the last year of World War Two.
Roosevelt had long suffered from polio and his health had become increasingly fragile in the last years of his life, with the stress of leading his nation through World War Two taking its toll on him. In the last months of his life, he was diagnosed as suffering from hardening of the arteries, and his death was the the result of a cerebral hemorrage. His death shocked and dismayed America and her allies, as the details of Roosevelt’s health had been a closely held secret. The nation mourned his lost, and on V-E Day, less than a month later, President Harry S. Truman, who had succeeded Roosevelt, dedicated the victory to the fallen man.
It’s commonly believed that this is where Nixon got his start in politics, but in fact he was a member of Congress (representing the California 12th) from 1946 to 1950. But by 1950, he’d made enough of an impact in California to secure the Republican nomination to run for the Senate. Continue reading 1950 – Richard Nixon elected to the US Senate
The bomb was code-named “Ivy Mike”. It was the first test of the Teller-Ulam bomb design, which produced yield estimated in the range of 10.4–12 Megatons (450 times as powerful as the Nagasaki bomb) when it was detonated on Elugelab Island in the Enwetak Atoll, in the Ralik chain of the Marshall Islands.
It was the first successful Hydrogen Bomb test by either side, the first fusion bomb, and the acquisition of this technology by the United States marked an escalation in the arms race of the Cold War – a little over nine months later, the Soviet Union would detonate a fusion bomb of its own.
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine black high school students who were enrolled to begin classes to begin classes in September of 1957 at the Little Rock Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas. The nine students – Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed and Melba Beals – arrived at the schooll on September 4 to find their path blockaded by the Arkansas National Guard, who had been ordered out the by the state’s Governor – in direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling ordering the end of segregation.
A tense stand-off ensued, with segregationists and intergrationists arguing vociferously and holding rallies in favour of their causes. Finally, on September 24, President Eisenhower federalised the Arkansas National Guard (thus placing them under his command rather than the Governor’s) and sent in the 101st Airborne division of the US Army. They peacefully dispersed the blockade and took up positions to prevent its reinstatment. The following day, the Little Rock Nine entered the school and began classes, although there remained a considerable amount of racism directed towards them by some white students.
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