July 10th

On July 10, 1894 a federal grand jury indicted Eugene V. Debs and other leaders of the American Railway Union, charging them with conspiracy against the government of the United States by interfering with interstate commerce during the Pullman strike. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, originally presented to regulate the powerful was often used to shackle unions. 14,000 federal and state troops finally succeed in putting down the strike against the Pullman Palace Car Co. Some 34 American Rail Union members were killed by troops over the course of the strike.

On This day in 1900 one of the world's most famous trademarks, "His Master’s Voice," was registered with the United States Patent Office. The Victor Recording Company, and later RCA Victor used logo of the dog Nipper looking into the horn of a gramophone.

Nipper was a stray dog found in 1884 by Mark Barraud in Bristol, UK. When mark died three years later, Nipper (named because of his tendency to nip the backs of visitors' legs) was taken to Liverpool by Mark's younger brother Francis, who was a painter. Nipper discovered the phonograph (a cylinder recording and playing machine) and Francis Barraud often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from. This scene must have been indelibly printed in Barraud's brain, for it was three years after nipper died (in September 1895) that he committed it to canvas.

Even though the era of "music you can touch" is ending in America, a graphic of "His Master's Voice" continues on the internet in the HMV logo.

In 1913 it got Hot Outside. Thermometers in Death Valley, California recorded the highest temperature in the continental United States, 134 degrees!

On July 10,1920 Man o' War, who did not win the Triple Crown because his owner did not like racing in Kentucky, defeated John P. Grier in the Dwyer Stakes. Man o' War, who had easily won every race he entered as a three year old and retired as one of the most successful studs of all time with a record of twenty wins in twenty-one races had trouble finding a challenger.

The 1920 Dwyer turned into a match race when the owner of John P. Grier was the only one willing to run their horse against the great Man o' War. However, confronting John P. Grier proved to be one of his hardest races. The two horses raced head-to-head for most of the distance until John P. Grier put his nose in front at the eighth pole, but Man o' War came back to win by more than a length.

In the following decade Seabiscuit became an unlikely champion and a symbol of hope to many US citizens during the Great Depression. Fifty years after Man o' War's undefeated season, another large chestnut colt and was born and given the same nickname, "Big Red." Secretariat, who was won in a coin toss by Penny Chenery, did win The Triple Crown and still holds the track record for both the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes.

The Scopes Monkey Trial began on July 10, 1925. With very little culture to fall back on and no longer having a war to fight, rural America became a place of God and gossip. With Charles Darwin as the enemy, beginning with the education system, they set out to eradicate evolution. By 1925, states across the South had passed laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the classroom. The ACLU set their sights on Tennessee's Butler Act and the stage was set in Dayton, Tennessee.

During the twelve hot July days in court, Dayton swarmed with politicians and lawyers, preachers and university scholars, reporters and even circus performers. The streets of Dayton took on the appearance of a small-town fair, with people selling food, souvenirs and religious books. On the side of the courthouse ran a banner blaring "Read Your Bible Daily!" The reporters came from as far away as Hong Kong, and collectively they penned more than two million words during the trial. Chief among the media was H.L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, known for his caustic wit and cynical observations.

Into this media circus meets religious revival rolled two of the greatest legal minds of the time, facing off to battle each other. William Jennings Bryan called the trial a "contest between evolution and Christianity ... a duel to the death". Known as The Great Commoner to the people, Bryan was a three-time presidential candidate and former Secretary of State to Woodrow Wilson. After a few years of retirement, he joined the Chautauqua circuit to rail against Darwin in tent revivals across the country.

Across the courtroom at the defendant's table was Clarence Darrow, with a sharp criminal lawyer's mind and an infamous reputation. To Bryan, he was "the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States." Darrow himself joined the defense table because "for years," he said, "I've wanted to put Bryan in his pace as a bigot."

Clarence Darrow cleaning of William Jennings Bryan's clock has become legendary. "Inherit the Wind" has made for some great theater and memorable movies but Stokes was found guilty, in overturning the ruling the Tennessee Supreme Court squirmed out under a technicality and the law remained on the books until 1967.

Fundamentalist were just as pissed off on July 10, 1997 when scientists in London said DNA from a Neanderthal skeleton supported a theory that all humanity descended from an "African Eve" 100,000 to 200,000 years ago and just this week Arizona State Sen. Sylvia Allen claimed that the "This Earth's been hear 6,000 years."

In 1928 George Eastman, in Rochester, New York, showed a group of viewers the first color motion pictures ever exhibited. The film subjects included flowers, butterflies, peacocks, goldfish, and attractive women. On the same day seventy years later Lethal Weapon 4 premiered.

Lady Sings the Blues. On this Day in 1936 Billi Holiday a woman who "changed the art of American pop vocals forever," went into the recording studio and with instrumental support provided by Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw and Cozy Cole, recorded Billie's Blues.

On This Day in 1940 Jelly Roll Morton died in Los Angeles. The American Memory Section of The Library of Congress focuses on his life today.

Born Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 20, 1890, Morton began playing piano as a child. At age twelve he worked nightspots in the city's Storyville district. Between 1904 and 1917, Morton crisscrossed the nation playing minstrel and vaudeville shows. Billing himself as "Jelly Roll" Morton, by 1910 his style embraced a range of influences from ragtime and popular music to blues and spirituals.

After five successful years in Los Angeles, Morton moved to Chicago in 1923. Leading an ensemble called Red Hot Peppers, his recordings won national popularity. A master of composition, Morton disciplined jazz with careful rehearsal and arrangement while retaining opportunities for improvisation. The orchestral style he pioneered flourished, but by the 1930s, Morton's sound seemed outdated and his popularity declined.

Down on his luck, Jelly Roll Morton moved to Washington, D.C., where he managed a jazz club. There, Alan Lomax, assistant-in-charge of the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center) encountered Morton and persuaded him to participate in a series of oral history interviews documenting the origins of jazz.

With Morton seated at the piano in the Library's Coolidge Auditorium, Lomax recorded over eight hours of Morton's music and reminiscences. Immediately recognized as an invaluable resource for musicologists, folklorists, and jazz lovers, the Library of Congress recordings revived Morton's career. Unfortunately, poor health curtailed his comeback on the music scene.

On July 10, 1940, during World War II, the 114-day air attack of Great Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking southern England by air. In the famous "This was their finest hour" speech Sir Winston Churchill named the air assault "The Battle of Britain."

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

By late October, Britain managed to repel the Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses.

On July 10, 1943 British and Canadian troops joined the American paratroopers from the night before and the Allied Invasion of Sicily began.

The invasion fleet was described by one pilot as stretching across 40 miles of water consisting of huge barges and merchant ships escorted by destroyers.

At about 0300 local time today the British and Canadian troops were brought ashore at Pachino, near Cape Passero on the south-east coast of the south-eastern tip of Sicily.

Operation Husky was the largest amphibious operation of the war in terms of men landed on the beaches and of frontage. The goal of the campaign, to drive Axis air and naval forces from the island and open the Mediterranean's sea lanes was reached by August 10th. It opened the way to the Allied invasion of Italy.

On the same day Arthur Ashe, the winner of 33 career titles and the first African-American inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, was born. In the events leading up to his tragic death on February 6, 1993, the civil rights activist did much to change the national opinion about AIDS. Two months before his death, as an advocate of universal health care and to help address issues of inadequate health care delivery, he founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health. To honor his memory, the main stadium at the USTA National Tennis Center, where the US Open is played, is named for the three time winner of The Grand Slam, Arthur Ashe Stadium.

In 1949 the first practical rectangular television picture tube was unveiled. Measuring 12 by 16 inches, it sold for $12. The following year the first remote intended to control a television was developed but Americans were forced to wait five more years for the TV Dinner. It took another fifty-three years for television to finally reach an American Zenith.

In 1951 the human version of Man o'War, the flamboyant Sugar Ray Robinson, also credited as being the originator of the modern sports "entourage" was defeated for only the second time in 133 fights by Randy Turpin. Three months later in front of 60,000 fans at the Polo Grounds he knocked Turpin out in ten rounds to recover middleweight crown. The only other time Robinson was defeated it took a Raging Bull and when Robinson and Jake LaMotta met for the sixth time, on February 14, 1951 Robinson's TKO win was called The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

In 1962 the communications satellite, "Telstar" launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. "Telstar" brought in the new age of communications via telephone and television, with picture and voice transmissions going from Europe to America and back. A 38-ton antenna in Andover, Maine, picked up signals. To memorialize the event, English surf-rock group, the Tornadoes made an instrumental hit when they reached the number one spot for three weeks in November 1962, with "Telstar."

On July 10, 1964 A Hard Day's Night is the third UK album by The Beatles.

On this date in 1965 the Rolling Stones topped the Billboard Charts for the first time with "I Can't Get No Satisfaction." Their later hit "Street Fighting Man" pointed to the real way to get some satisfaction.

In 1967 Bobbie Gentry recorded "Ode to Billie Joe" on July 10th. This haunting and mysterious recount of indifference to a young man's tragic suicide and the mystery of the singer's relationship became a very haunting number one single.

Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?
I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite.
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today,
Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday. Oh, by the way,
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge
And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge."

A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe.
Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo.
There was a virus going 'round, papa caught it and he died last spring,
And now mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything.
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge,
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

On July 10, 1985, the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, which was due to sail to Moruroa Atoll to protest French atmospheric nuclear-weapons tests there, was sunk by two bomb explosions while berthed in Auckland Harbour, N.Z. Subsequent revelations that French intelligence agents had planted the bombs caused a major international scandal and led to the resignation of France’s minister of defense and the dismissal of the head of its intelligence service. It was codenamed Opération Satanique.

Ten years ago: The United States woman's soccer team won the World Cup, beating China 5-4 on penalty kicks after 120 minutes of scoreless play at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.

Five years ago: One day after Republicans tried to fire up religious conservatives for the coming election by forcing a constitutional hate amendment to the Senate floor Bush used his weekly radio address to call for protecting "traditional marriage." He claimed that "legalizing gay marriage would redefine the most fundamental institution of civilization."

One year ago: President George W. Bush signed a bill presented by a spineless Democratic congress that overhauled rules about government eavesdropping and granting immunity to telecommunications companies, helping the U.S. ramp up spying on Americans. Former White House adviser Karl Rove ignored a subpoena from the same spineless congress. He just refused to testify about his transforming the Justice Department into a republican political body. But Pat Leahy did send Rove several nasty letters.